The shy 15-year-old, who asked not to be identified, left his designer shoes - which were cheap due to their unusually large size - in a cubbyhole at the pool while he went for a swim on Saturday.
The shoes were gone when he returned to get dressed.
A search of the pool complex by staff was fruitless, leaving the secondary-school boarder no choice but to walk home barefoot.
His mother said the shoes were probably stolen as a prank, given the unlikelihood of another swimmer with size 15 Dolce and Gabbana footwear at the pool on Saturday.
She asked anyone who might have seen or found the distinctive shoes to contact pool staff or police.
"He needs them back because, as you can imagine, shoes that size are hard to come by and he only has jandals for getting around town now."
Dunedin City Council aquatic services manager Steve Prescott said security cameras were installed at Moana Pool but to a large degree swimmers left their belongings unattended at their own risk.
Both open and secured lockers were available for use within the complex, he said.
"If something's been taken, we can't do much about that but we try to make sure that everything that's been lost or misplaced or found is logged in a register and we have a lost and found store-room. We have video surveillance on the open lockers and if someone has a rough idea of the time they think something was taken, we'll look at footage and nine times out of ten we've picked up people like that."
