If you had asked me a week ago if I thought that there was anything interesting left to do with a mary jane, I would have told you that there probably wasn’t. After one sees Miu Miu’s chunky 60s silk mary janes with white birds all over them, one tends to think that the style has reached its logical aesthetic limit. One would be wrong (and I would be wrong as well).

I have a great love for 3.1 Phillip Lim’s modern, youth-oriented ready-to-wear but have been somewhat less enthusiastic about the brand’s handbags. As far as shoes go, after seeing the 3.1 Phillip Lim Peep Show Mary Jane, I can officially say that I’m in love. Lim looked at the traditional shape of the shoe, change one thing and managed to make it completely modern and interesting.

Choosing to attach the strap to the back of the shoe instead of to the sides is so simple and yet so unexpected that it’s a totally brilliant move. It instantly ups the modernity of a somewhat retro shoe, but it does so without making the design difficult to wear or inappropriate for any setting in which a regular mary jane would have been acceptable. If more designers were willing to think critically about their products, we’d have more great shoes like these. Buy through Nordstrom for $575.