Find a piece · Square-toe embellished flat
The flat that became a franchise.
Type the name and the search bar finishes it for you: Michaela flats, Michaela mary jane, Michaela square toe. When a single style earns its own autocomplete, something in the design is doing real work, and here it is the toe. Sam Edelman squared it off — not the brutal chisel of a runway loafer, a soft square, closer to a French manicure than a box — and that one decision moved the flat from ballet-adjacent to something with intent.
The Michaela now comes in five fabrications, and the ladder tells you what each material is for: jelly at $46 for the pool months, knit and buckled versions in the $140 range for the commute, and this one at the top — sheer mesh scattered with crystal, the so-called naked shoe done as a flat. Mesh flats are everywhere this year; most read as tights with a sole. The gems are what keep this pair from disappearing on the foot, catching light exactly where a plain mesh shoe goes flat.
At $150 it sits in the honest middle of the embellished-flat market, where the designer versions start at four times that before the crystals even get counted. The swap below keeps the idea — a delicate flat with something glinting on it — and does it with hardware instead of stones.
The piece
Sam Edelman — Michaela Square Toe Gem Embellished Mesh Mary Jane Shoes
Style it with
Where it goes
If the square toe feels like a commitment, the round-toe original this shape was pushing against is argued on its own page.
For the evenings that outgrow a flat, the heel built for standing through all of it picks up where the mesh leaves off.
Come June the same ankle line goes coastal with the espadrille wedge with a front zip.
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