On a first date with Joe Biden in 1975, Jill Biden, then a student at the University of Delaware, immediately noticed his shoes. Like she told me later: I used to go out with guys in jeans and clogs and T-shirts, he came to the door, he had a sports jacket and moccasins, and I thought: My God, it’ll never work, not in a million years.
As the new First Lady pointed out, the difference between scoring and not scoring can seem enormous. On the one hand, bohemian aplomb; on the other hand, incalculable mistrust of any shoe that shares an etymology with plumbing accidents. But reader, she married him. Is decoupling really as yawning as we assume?
When I look at hoof pictures on social media, I am platonically crushed by women I love.
The situation is getting tighter, especially as consumer and luxury brands offer new designs for passionate consumers. September,
Crocs
a partnership with Puerto Rican rap star Bad Bunny who sold out in 16 minutes. And this season, Hermès, best known for its handbags with an annual waiting list, is releasing the early iteration; at $990, it enters a new category of luxury clogs. Hermès Design follows
Louis Vuitton,
The Gucci, Dior and Chanel versions, not to mention the more affordable Everlane and Gap offerings, all fall behind number 6, the New York brand whose pair of wooden clay shoes made a fashionable class name 15 years ago.
This blossoming of the shoe not only indicates the high-end appropriation of a shoe formerly associated with craftsmen and hippies, but also its new general appeal.
Like everything else this year, the pandemic has led to an increase in constipation. With fewer and fewer reasons to wear formal shoes, whether it’s unemployment or closing an office, a light pair of briefs is naturally attractive. And perhaps because their comfort and support make them the beloved medical professionals, the superheroes of 2020, they have adopted an associative sense of well-being.
They also carry an aesthetic message. said Lauren Mechling, a writer (who wrote for the Wall Street Journal) and founder of the Instagram @thecloglife congestion account: The framework is: I’m too cool to care. If your shoes don’t have a back, you’re naturally relaxed.
They are also an indicator of non-conformist taste and opinion, says Lana Bittman, librarian at the Institute of Fashion Technology. Watching hoof pictures on social media gives me a platonic love at first sight for women I love. I want to know what books she reads and what her living room looks like.
Clogs date back to the Middle Ages and were mainly farmer’s shoes made of cheap and readily available material, offering protection against the occupational hazards of farming and other dangerous and physically demanding work. They were also badly damaged, as a team of archaeologists discovered during the excavation of a 19th century Dutch cemetery in 2011. Centuries of found skeletons with visible parts of the foot bones are missing, the result of hard work in stiff shoes.
The clogs were adopted by the rich in the 1920s, when open-toed sandals and the brown colour, another symbol of the working class, became fashion accessories associated with holiday resorts such as the Riviera and Palm Beach. They then gave way to the current spherical shoe shape, which migrated from Scandinavia to Europe and North America in the late 1960s. It was part of a nostalgic and deeply rooted fashion wave that, together with a growing interest in anti-technological activities such as crafts and ecology, which, you rightly admit, resembles our Prairie clothing gift.
But perhaps the most interesting example in the recent history of wearing clogs in occupied France during the Second World War. During the Nazi invasion, they seized the industrial production of France, including the lion’s share of shoe production. So the French had to make do with… The hooves. But these were no ordinary farmsteads. Because of the strict rationing, fashion under the German occupation was a form of protest that became known as the D-System – a reference to the quality of the fourth selection of many available materials. From everything they could get their hands on, French women made giant turbans (the pink flakes of their time), patriotic accessories and imposing clogs – all to assert their individuality while living under the occupation. Carmel Snow, then editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, wrote about the noise these clogs make when they leave her office every night.
If the traffic jams continue to arrive, we can hear that sound again in the not too distant future. If that happens, we know that clogs have become an acceptable form of office clothing, and then they can mean something else.
Babies in the forest
Modern fashion clogs come in all styles, and if it doesn’t snow, they’re a great opportunity to show off all the socks you got for Christmas.
Clockwise from top left: Here is a pair that is on the wish list of each fashion editor. Shoes, $990, Hermès, 212-751-3181; Rachel Comey offers a selection of clogs like this big shiny model. shoes, $450, rachelcomey.com; blocks are generally not considered cool, but they are black, cut. Shoes, $920, celine.com; For a comfortable, winter grip, try them on the brand’s No. 6 shelf. Shoes, $305, no6store.com
The Wall Street Journal is not paid for by retailers who appear in its articles as selling merchandise. The shops mentioned are often not the only ones.
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