Episode 6 of Pump Fiction is live — and we are stepping (carefully) into the Alexander McQueen Armadillo, the alien heel that marched straight out of Plato’s Atlantis and into fashion history.

First shown in 2009 — the same runway that brought us the first-ever live-streamed show and Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance moment — the Armadillo was more than a shoe. It was sculpture, statement, and survival test in one. Hand-carved in Italy, zipped like a spacecraft, and worn only by the fearless, it blurred the line between fashion and fantasy.

Here are three things you might not know about the Armadillo — unless you have tried walking in one (in which case, respect):

Come for the Gaga mythology, stay for the story of a shoe that asked: what if beauty grew gills?