Katy Perry's shoes had blue eyes and red lips — the black pair was pulled in a day

Katy Perry Collections — the pop star's footwear line produced with Global Brands Group — launched The Rue slip-on loafer and The Ora block-heel sandal in the summer of 2018. Both designs carried the same face: blue eyes, a gold triangular nose and bright red lips, rendered across nine shades — black, blue, gold, graphite, lead, nude, pink, red and silver. A representative said the styles were 'envisioned as a nod to modern art and surrealism.' For months the line sold quietly.

Then, in February 2019 — days after Gucci pulled its balaclava sweater and weeks after Prada withdrew its Pradamalia charms — social media users pointed out that the black colourways of the two shoes resembled blackface imagery. By the afternoon of February 11, the styles were gone from the Katy Perry Collections website — removed, the site said, on behalf of Perry and Global Brands Group — and product links at Dillard's and Walmart had disappeared; the BBC reported Amazon had also removed them in the UK.

Perry's statement read: 'I was saddened when it was brought to my attention that it was being compared to painful images reminiscent of blackface. Our intention was never to inflict any pain. We have immediately removed them.' What sealed the episode in fashion's memory was its place in the sequence: within one winter, Prada's monkey charms, Gucci's balaclava, Burberry's noose hoodie and now a celebrity footwear line had each rediscovered the same blind spot — a design room that never asked what an image meant outside itself.