“IT IS the first time that a shoe has caused this kind of frenzy,” says Alexandra Chantecaille, a spokeswoman for the shoe designers Sigerson Morrison. She is referring to a coveted new fashion item: the (wait for it) kitten-heeled rubber flip-flop (£70). Yes, that sounds like a perverse fashion hybrid, but it has a unique appeal — coquettish in the manner of a fledgeling Hollywood starlet circa 1960 with the simple innocence of any summery flat shoe. In April, women pestered the London branch for details of its arrival, and queued outside the New York store, although 140 pairs were already spoken for. Even the display models had been sold.
Flip-flops and rubber are not the first things that come to mind when you think of Sigerson Morrison’s designs, but its founders — Kari Sigerson and Miranda Morrison — realised that they were on to something. The company is now producing 2,500 pairs of flip-flops every week, yet the waiting lists are barely dented.
The kitten-heeled flip-flop’s precocious success just adds to the evidence that a) the once lowly poolside accessory has entered the high fashion pantheon, and b) feet are more naked than ever.
Lately a flip-flop hierarchy has emerged. Havaianas, which for more than 30 years have been the £2-a-pair flip-flops (multiply that by ten for the UK price) of pretty much everyone in Brazil, suddenly took off last year, turning up jewel-covered in goodie bags for Oscar nominees and on the catwalk at Jean Paul Gaultier. Exports, which were at zero three years ago, rose to 20 million pairs last year.
There are now countless upmarket versions of the flip-flop: Chanel has a £130 version that looks very like the classic wooden-soled Dr Scholl sandal; Prada has a £250 leather thong sandal; and Helmut Lang has a rubber flip-flop that looks virtually indistinguishable from the ones you find in beachside shops.
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But what to wear with them? Some think that the ultimate pairing lies in wearing anything that looks obviously ludicrous when paired with basic rubber shoes. “One girl in our office wore an expensive black pencil skirt and little cashmere jumper — with cheap pink flip-flops,” says Nana Hunt, who works at a London PR agency.
But what is it about the naked foot — the female foot, in particular — that has the power to turn otherwise sensible people into prudes? “Feet are, and have always been, a sexual part of the body,” says Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and the author of Shoes: A Lexicon of Style (Rizzoli, 1999). “The foot is a surrogate for other parts of the body,” she adds.
“Something has happened to shoes and there is no going back,” says Robert Burke, the fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman. “It really started a few years ago with the mule. And then there were open-toed shoes, slingbacks, flats with open toes, flats with toe straps.”
In other words, feet were once private, but they have become more and more public. Until the beginning of the 20th century “the last thing a woman would want to do is put her foot on display,” says Mary Trasko, the author of the shoe history Heavenly Soles (Abbeville Press, 1992). Showing feet remained taboo until the 1920s, when footwear started to open up.
Alan Seymour, a surf promoter and historian, remembers when flip-flops first appeared. “I grew up in Laguna Beach in the Fifties and I remember guys back from Japan wearing them after the Korean War.” They were quickly absorbed into the informal landscape of surf culture. “They were the closest you could come to bare feet,” Seymour explains.
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This seems to be precisely the reason that some people hate them and some love them. They used to be just summer shoes for most of the UK and the US, until workplace fashion changed in the Nineties. With loosening dress codes, there came a new prestige in dressing as if leisure could strike at any moment.
But Letitia Baldrige, the author of 18 books on manners, former social secretary at the White House and chief of staff for Jacqueline Kennedy, believes that women who wear foot-baring shoes have an agenda. “They make noise, they announce that they are coming with their flip-flops, and your eye travels down to the feet,” she says. “They want you to look at their feet. It is part of a grimy, show-off-your-body, bare-skin thing. It is disgusting what’s going on.”
The current vogue for the naked foot presents the ultimate in body fascism: meticulous grooming is imperative. For the fashion-following flipflop wearer, the aesthetic is especially crucial. The latest obsession is having cosmetic surgery to improve the look of your feet.
“People are now having toes shortened or plumped up, and feet narrowed or straightened — at costs as high as £10,000,” says Dr Richard Cowin, the president of the Academy of Ambulatory Foot and Ankle Surgery.
But not everyone loves the flip-flop trend. “Now that we have to go outside to smoke like Californians, do we have to give up (cigarettes) and dress like them, too?” asked The New York Observer, mourning the proliferation of bare toes across the city.