Zendaya pairs Maison Margiela tabi wedges with a 1999 Prada duster in Paris

Zendaya's go-to footwear category is tabi. She keeps split-toe flats, ankle boots and loafers in the rotation, and this week in Paris she added a new specimen: black leather Maison Margiela tabi wedge heels.

The wedges turned up during a shopping stop at Merci, the Paris concept store, where the actor "zhuzed up a classic look," per Vogue. Her base was as straightforward as it gets: light-wash jeans and a crisp white shirt.

The real statement was the top layer, a black leather Prada duster from fall 1999. With its tough, Matrix-era finish, the coat demanded a shoe that could keep pace; the tabi wedge was the answer.

Two polarizing trends in one shoe

The tabi wedge fuses two footwear lanes people love to argue about. The split-toe tabi once read as pure edginess, and as Vogue's Hannah Jackson writes, it now takes a little extra to make it feel subversive. The wedge, meanwhile, is mid-comeback: summer 2026 was "a renaissance for the humble wedge sandal," and Zendaya is trying to carry it into fall.

Both halves come with baggage. Maison Margiela's split-toe tabi has been dividing opinion since its late-'80s debut, while the wedge forever wobbles between "comfort classic" and easy punchline. Stacking both onto one black leather heel is exactly the kind of chaos her collection runs on.

Tabi shoes went from weird to wardrobe staple over the past few years, and Zendaya has been one of their highest-profile champions. The new wedge signals she is taking the silhouette somewhere new this season.

Zendaya has stayed in Paris after the Louis Vuitton spring 2027 show, where she rewore one of her press-tour looks from The Odyssey. She hit Merci with her longtime assistant Darnell Appling, and the tabi wedges made one thing plain: her fall wardrobe has already switched on, before most of us have so much as located a coat.