UK Designer Debbie Wingham has unveiled the world’s most expensive pair of shoes. The stiletto heels are encrusted with precious metals and rare stones — and feature a whopping $15.1 million (USD) price tag.
Wingham is famous for her opulent creations and has worked for many celebrities, royals, and wealthy elite over the course of her career. She is known for crafting the world’s most expensive dress, a Red Diamond Abaya gown, which was encrusted with over 2000 diamonds, including the world’s most expensive red diamond, and priced at $15.45 million (USD). Wingham also owns a baking company, Couture to Cakes, and is known for having also crafted a $64 million (USD) diamond-encrusted cake for a UAE client.
Wingham’s latest creation is a collaboration between herself and Florida-based contemporary artist Chris Campbell. Wingham contributed the design while Campbell crafted the shoes over hundreds of painstaking hours.
The perfectly symmetrical heels feature three-carat rare pink and one-carat blue diamonds, which alone cost over $128k (USD). There are four flawless three-carat diamonds and 1000 pointer diamonds set in platinum framing the piped and quilted details, which are meant to resemble a cake. The shoes also feature solid gold zippers and soles, leather painted in 24 carat gold paint, and the stitching was done with 18 carat gold thread. Inside, the shoes are adorned with gold thread inlay. The shoes were finished with a rose gold accent to give slight contrast. Leather Arabian jasmine flowers are the final touch.
Wingham said of the pair: “Many of my clients have valuable pieces of jewelry that live in a safe and are only worn once or twice in a lifetime; by using their precious gems to design a bespoke piece of art, I can create something that can be admired on a daily basis.”
Wingham has stated that the shoes are the final piece in her ‘most expensive collection’. Alongside her couture bakery, she also runs the successful Future of Fashion academy for young designers, offering a range of workshops to suit different needs and levels of experience. Wingham uses her extensive contacts and acts as a mentor to emerging talent, putting on high-end fashion events that normally the young creatives would not be able to afford, and offering exposure that also would not typically be accessible to most young designers.