What are you wearing on your feet right now? Slippers? Ugg boots? Birkenstocks? Trainers?
Fashion’s creep towards comfort — and away from high heels — has happened slowly. Stylish designer trainers, priced at hundreds or even thousands of pounds a pair, are now bestsellers for high-fashion houses. But it’s not just pretty shoes. When off-duty models adopted Uggs as uniform, those squashy, shearling-lined boots became ubiquitous. Then there were the all-terrain sandals and hiking boots once worn by dads on camping trips, now commonly worn by influencers on the front row of fashion week. Birkenstock now collaborates with designer brands including Valentino and Jil Sander on chunky sandals that supermodels wear with socks underneath.
But there is one shoe that, no matter the designer collaboration or A-list endorsement, has proven to be a step too far. The final ugly/comfy shoe frontier.
“I think I’d rather die but thank you anyway @justinbieber,” Victoria Beckham wrote to her nearly 30 million followers on Instagram when the pop star Justin Bieber sent her a pair of lilac Crocs with cartoon characters pinned into the holes in April, which he’d designed in collaboration with the brand.
An extreme sentiment, but not a unique one. Since the brand launched in 2002, these foam clogs have been the height of naffness. Even we fashion editors, who are occasionally led up the garden path all the way to the nudist colony, where the emperor is very much enjoying his new clothes, could not be convinced. Not in 2016, when Christopher Kane showed marble-printed and crystal encrusted Crocs on the catwalk at London Fashion Week. Not in 2017, when Balenciaga’s canary yellow and bubblegum-pink platform version were the talk of Paris Fashion Week (and not in a good way).
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Not everyone is anti-Crocs. Pharrell Williams, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande and Ashley Graham have worn them. The American musician Questlove wore a pair to the Oscars this year. But as the very stylish Zoë Kravitz explained when she forbade her friend Channing Tatum from wearing his: “There are people out there who can pull off the Crocs thing, I just wasn’t sure you were one of them.”
But something has changed. Last week Crocs reported sales of $640 million in the three-month period ending June 30 — that’s nearly double the same period last year, and we were all housebound at that point, swapping all of our clothes for tracksuits and comfort. Now most stores are reporting record sales of special-occasion dresses — so, I have to wonder, will you be wearing Crocs with yours?
Certainly, Gen Z-ers are keen. That’s possibly because they feel nostalgic about Crocs. Since the beginning they’ve been popular with parents shopping for their children (especially for the beach), and now those children are grown up and sharing their outfits on social media. Crocs are customisable, and they’re affordable, unlike most It buys. And they’ve been worn by two contestants on Love Island, a show that drives huge numbers of sales for the fast-fashion brands that appear on it.
But $640 million in three months can’t all be down to Gen Z. There must be Crocs converts living among us: they could be your neighbour, your sister, your friend. Certainly a pair would come in handy on your staycation, on pebbly British beaches and muddy camping sites. And while you’re gardening. And running errands . . . Once you’ve worn them, it’s a slippery slope, especially because most of us have gone so long without wearing “proper” shoes that our toes might go on strike if we attempted to now. Perhaps we hold-outs are fighting a losing battle — mostly because the other side’s feet are so comfortable that they could go on like this for months. So, will you be next?
