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Credit: Teva x UGG site.
Birkenstocks were the top-searched shoe on Google at the start of the summer. Velcro Tevas and rubber Crocs both made appearances on New York Fashion Week runways. Then, this happened: a sandal-boot hybrid so objectively hideous that CNBC, Racked and Cosmopolitan all dubbed it the ugliest shoe of all time.
What the hell is going on? Is there really, as Bloomberg View dubs this trend, a “Billion-Dollar Race for the Ugliest Shoe?”
Yes and no. Some aspects of this current fashion cycle are perfectly predictable while others are new, and fueled by today’s significant pressure on brands to win over a specific type of fashion influencer: the Cool Girl.
Ugg X Teva comes in 3 colors and retails for $225. (Credit: Uggs)
The Cool Girl is surrounded by myth -- she’s always fashion-forward but never trying too hard. She fearlessly embraces new styles but rejects them once they hit critical mass and become too popular. Today’s version gets photographed outside fashion week, and has a huge Instagram following. The Cool Girl is the reason why, after a brief moment in the 1960s, and then another appearance in the early 1990s, Birkenstocks are ubiquitous again. She started wearing them a few summers back and now, in 2016, the brand’s mobile Google searches have quadrupled over the previous year.
Granted, the timing is right for a style like the Birkenstock. We’re in the midst of a typical clunky, chunky shoe cycle, which happens when our eyes get too accustomed to seeing delicate high heels and women get sick of walking in them. In the 1960s, after years of stilettos being the norm, low, block-heeled shoes came into fashion. Birkenstock sandals first arrived in the States in 1966. In the late 1980s, after expensive, pointy-toed designer pumps became the “it” shoes, candy-colored Reebok Freestyles – the first athletic shoes for women– took their place as the footwear du jour. Unflattering Reeboks changed the dominant silhouette, and paved the way for the memorable shoes of the early 1990s: Converse Chuck Taylors, Dr. Marten 1460s and Vans. Then, in the latter half of that decade, heels started rising again, reaching an apotheosis in Carrie Bradshaw’s spindly Manolos.
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In the post-Sex and the City era, women teetered in increasingly high heels, until four, five and even six-inch stilettos, inspired by Christian Louboutin, became the norm. Now, over these past few years, there’s been a cyclical return to foot-friendly styles. Louboutin designs sneakers! Nineties nostalgia is in fashion, and the rise of street style – inspired by the streets, where people actually walk – have had significant influence, too.
But that doesn’t fully explain the appearance of groan-inducing Crocs on the runway, or the birth of those Frankenstein Teva/Uggs. In order to understand the ugly shoe trend, it’s important to break down the psychology of the Cool Girl and to acknowledge the perpetual contest for her attention. There’s also undoubtedly a race going on in the footwear world to create a comfort shoe that receives elusive fashion approval , which, at least historically, very, very few brands outside of the sneaker space have been able to do.
Birkenstocks were once considered hideous, too. The people behind Uggs, Tevas, Crocs – they’re all anxious for the Cool Girl to embrace their shoes. Their “ugliness” isn’t necessarily an impediment. Fashion designers love to defy expectations, changing the prevalent shapes, altering our tastes. The Cool Girl enjoys a good challenge. Anyone can look good in exquisite clothes, but unflattering ones? Her innate sense of style, and her confidence in her choices, is what makes her stand out.
For a designer like Christopher Kane, putting embellished Crocs on the runway is a surprising, cheeky move that gets people talking. The benefits for Crocs are obvious, too: they become associated with high fashion, even if at first that association is taken as a joke. The Christopher Kane show opens up the possibility that the Cool Girl will start wearing Crocs. That’s what Crocs is likely hoping for, as evidenced by this sponsored story on the hugely influential blog Man Repeller, called “What If Crocs Were the New White Sneaker?” (Man Repeller, by the way, has 1.5 million followers on Instagram.)
When Crocs made their debut in 2002, they were expediently rejected by the fashion world as unsightly mass-market comfort shoes. That didn’t stop people from wearing them: famously, tourists, nurses and chefs. But Crocs, which is publicly traded and counts SAC Capital and The Blackstone Group as investors, has been struggling to recreate the success of their first few years on the market, from 2002-2007. Getting anointed as an “it” shoe – even if it’s ironically at first – would certainly help.
It might take time for our eyes to adjust. Our feet, however, will thank us.
