Jack Tame: Crocs are back in fashion

Fashion. 

It’s not a subject I can profess to knowing an awful lot about, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the ebbs and flows of what’s hot and what’s not, it’s that you can never rule anything out. 

No matter how unfashionable something is, no matter how objectively horrible it looks, at some point it will be in. 

It’s easy to forget, once upon a time codpieces were the height of sophistication and taste. It happened with sneans, sneakers and jeans. And even though it would seem very unusual by today’s standards to see a group of young men loping around with their pants halfway down their thighs and their underwear sticking out, low-riding was until recently very fashionable and sadly given the cyclical nature of fashion, it’ll probably be fashionable again. 

This brings me to Crocs. I’m hardly the first person to notice the popularity of the plastic-y modern clog. But I’ve been struck by the way in which Crocs have crossed from being a sort of ironic haha-I’m-wearing-ugly-shoes option for middle aged people who wanted to wind up their teenagers, to a shoe which is actually cool, cool. Crocs have been worn by popstars and Hollywood heartthrobs. For several years now they’ve been the boot of choice for the likes of Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, and fashionistas at openings in fancy art galleries. 

Nowhere is this more obvious than with kids. I was standing at the bottom of a large and slightly intimidating slide at a West Auckland playground last weekend, waiting for my stepson to come on down. And kid after kid after kid whipped off a pair of Crocs and threw the shoes to the bottom of the slide, least the rubbery soles stunt their momentum on the way down. 

The way kids wear them, of course, is with Jibbitz. Jibbitz are little charms that you can attach to a pair of Crocs in much the same way as you might wear a charm on a charm bracelet. It’s a way for kids to further personalise their Crocs and distinguish their pair from everyone else’s. Fashions come and go but one thing that has never changed in the schoolyard: shoes are still the ultimate status symbol. 

But of course, as is the danger with in-demand fashions, there are inevitably downsides to the popularity. At least one New Zealand school has introduced a complete Crocs ban. Several others are banning the Jibbitz charms as kids argue over them. 

There’s always the risk you might push a trend too far and get caught out as the fashion tides change. Ugly is trendy, I get that. But I must confess to wondering how far the concept reaches after being confronted this week by an ad for a Croc accessory I’d never seen before. 

Croc Nuts. The perfect solution for that hard-to-buy-for person in your life, this Christmas. For those who are familiar with Truck Nutz, it’s more or less the same concept. A pair of gleaming metallic testicles which you can clip to the back of your Crocs to swing around in the breeze as you go about your business. 

Taste may be in the eye of the beholder. But let this serve as a reminder to all of us: in fashion, you can never rule anything out. 

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