The world of fashion is a strange and mercurial one. What is fashionable and wearable for one person may be outlandish and inexplicable for another. So when there are new fashion trends some are eager, even anxious to jump atop these whereas others find those new trends strange, even laughable. Now there is something new on the fashion firmament: distressed, taped sneakers.
This tatty looking object is a product sold on the Nordstrom website. It is described as “Crumply, hold-it-all-together tape details a distressed leather sneaker in a retro low profile with a signature sidewall star and a grungy rubber cupsole.”
One pair of the sneakers cost $530 or about rupees 38,000. Currently the shoes are sold out on the website. Clearly someone is stupid enough to be buying them.
Many commentators on Twitter seemed angry that fashion designers are seem to either be pulling a fast one on the buying public or are trying to glorify poverty. The sort of thing that would otherwise have invited derision and pitying titters is now suddenly cool?
I remember when I was in college, a pair of my jeans tore at the knee (as opposed to paying extra for deliberately torn jeans). We all thought it indicated a really cool, devil-may-care attitude to continue to wear those jeans.
It started out with faded jeans being cool. Then we had acid or stone washed jeans. Then there were slightly distressed jeans that progressed to ragged jeans and then on to jeans that are so distressed they were barely there; to you’d-better-be-wearing-clean-underwear-jeans like this picture.
To some of us, it is inexplicable that a new garment is taken and then processed to make it look old, raggedy, holey and generally something that a poverty stricken person would be forced to wear.
Clothing is ripped, tattered, covered in fake mud, even nibbled at or shot at – this is apparently very cool. And they do this to new clothing – this is an additional process involving a creative new design element, so they charge accordingly.
Some very strange processes go into creating distressed clothing. Zoo jeans are a thing too! New jeans are tied on to tyres and placed in animal enclosures in zoos where animals such as lions and tigers can ‘nibble’ at them.
Distressed shoes aren’t new either. Pre-ripped or torn shoes are also fashionable; commanding a much higher than usual price in the fashion world. Then there are these ‘pre-muddied’ shoes…perhaps designed by someone with a strict mother who, as a child was yelled at each time those clean shoes got dirty?
These items are not aestheticaly pleasing, they look unsavory and unhygienic. They are impractical as well, because you really don’t know what those ripped jeans will get tangled up in, and that holey jacket (appropriately called “where is my mind”) is really superfluous as protection against the cold air! In the end it is the desire to be different, to push the envelope that makes designers create these types of clothing; which makes people buy them. It is the desire to be different; but paradoxically also the desire to fit in with the trendy set that makes people fork out large amounts for this sort of thing. If someone wants to be made a fool out of, who am I to blow against the wind…
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