fashion+art: Michael Leavitt cardboard sneakers

American artist Michael Leavitt has created these cardboard sneakers (trainers to us Brits) as part of a series of "Cardboard Shoes & Hip Hopjects." We think they look cool and would love to try wearing them (weather permitting), but on a deeper level you can probably read something about our consumer culture from the fact that here we have (relatively) expensive and desirable consumption goods fashioned out of cheap cardboard, creating static, lifeless replicas of the real thing, which also seem ephemeral and, more pertinently perhaps, disposable. At the same time, by taking commonplace sneakers and replicating them in cardboard as art, Leavitt also makes us question what constitutes art, and draws our attention to goods created for commerce from another perspective: with the current financial turmoil and recession, should we take this as a hint to reexamine our commercial and consumer lives?

What's your opinion? Clever commentary or just insubstantial contemporary art which happens to look cool? We think these are rather clever, although most of his other projects don't do much for us (not being the greatest fans of contemporary art).

To see more, visit his website and the site of the Fuse Gallery in New York, where a show of his work will begin on 21st March.