Nicholas Kirkwood Pays Homage to Keith Haring With a Shoe Line

It's not unusual for a designer to honor his/her idols through their art—how many times per season is there a Toulouse reference on the runway?—but when we spotted these Keith Haring homage heels by British shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood, we had to do a double take.

After watching a documentary about the artist's life, Kirkwood approached the Keith Haring Foundation about incorporating his graphics into a capsule shoe line. The result was a 12-piece collection that reinterpreted the artist and activist's most famous works in totally distinct styles. But what's most surprising about the collaboration is how true to the original designs the shoes really are. "Radiant Baby," for example, is incarnated in wedge form, and a red-heeled stiletto with Haring's black and white graphic print is dead on trend this season.

The shoes are slated to hit stores in February 2011, but alas, rumor has it they will only be available in Hong Kong. It's probably just as well: we suspect that if we ever got a hold of shoes this spectacular we'd just end up oggling them inside a glass display case, anyhow.

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