Esme High Top Sneakers

Green so deep it reads as black until the sun finds it.

What is actually on them

One side of the shoe holds a dragonfly built like jewellery: gold body set with turquoise stones down its length, wings of fine gold filigree filled with teal, landed on a gold medallion of petals and dotted rings that spreads out behind it like a compass face. Gold beads trail away below.

The other panel lets them go loose — two more dragonflies in plain gold line, mid-flight, and a spray of long leaves and reeds in gold and teal leaning up from the lower edge. Small jewelled shapes sit up near the collar in amber and green. Underneath all of it the emerald is worked with a mandala one shade darker, out to the quarter panels and under the eyelets, and gold flecks drift across the whole thing.

White frame or black frame

The same drawing lands differently depending on what you wrap it in. Against a white sole, white laces and a white rubber toe, the green looks like a colour and the gold looks like sunlight on water. Go black — black sole, black laces, black toe — and the green drops back toward the dark, the gold does all the work, and the shoe stops looking printed and starts looking inlaid. Silver eyelets on both.

Sizes

US 4.5 to 14, halves included the whole way up. That is the part worth saying plainly, because half sizes are usually the first thing dropped when a size run gets shortened, and the women who need them are used to being told to just size up.

Yours is printed after you order, in the size and the colour you picked. That is why nothing here sells out, and why it is worth the days it takes.