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Got Crocs?
The Commercial Appeal, Nov 4, 2005
Gathered around a Collierville Middle School lunch table, five girls described how they followed the fad with both feet.
“The first thing I saw was the teachers wearing them at the beginning of the school year,” sixth-grader Paige Clever said.
“In June, my friend had gotten some,” chimed in Sarah Johnson, also in the sixth.
“I really liked them because they were so comfortable. I got mine in August.”
They were talking about the Crocs craze.
The clog-like shoes seem to weigh nothing at six ounces. They’re holier than Swiss cheese for ventilation. They’re colorful as a bed of tulips. They’re squishy soft.
A Boulder, Colo., company created Crocs in 2002 as a better boat shoe.
But their popularity has swept ashore like a tsunami.
“It’s just a hu-u-u-uge trend, a huge fad that’s just literally taken over this age group,” Collierville Middle principal Ingrid Warren said.
“But a lot of adults wear them; a lot of teachers wear them.”
As a campus fad, Crocs seem to be as ubiquitous as Northface jackets, Wallabees and Nikes once were. But at $29, Crocs are a cheaper trend.
Another company’s similar-looking shoe, the Airwalk Compel II Garden Clog, costs just $15.
Crocs have too much going for them to be a short-lived fad, says Madeline Temple, a fashion and retail trend spotter for Iconoculture. The company does consumer research.
“It has to do with what it is they offer,” says Temple, who probably didn’t need her Harvard and University of Chicago degrees to spot this one back in 2003.
“Comfort. Flexibility. They’re novel, funky. It’s fun. It’s colorful. And also they are at a great price,” she said.
Fads fizzle fast. Trends have roots. Crocs are a trend that’s still ascending, Temple says.
Everybody from backpackers to people who work for hours on their feet are fueling this trend, she says.
The shoes have caught fire this fall in Collierville schools.
“We saw a few at the very beginning,” said Crosswind Elementary principal Kim Lampkins. “But as the school year has gone on… now it’s just a common thing.”
Collierville High PTA president Michelle Kelley, who owns four pairs, said “a bunch” of high schoolers wear them.
“A lot of the guys have been wearing the darker colors,” she said.
There’s nothing muted about the Crocs worn by these girls at the Collierville Middle lunch table.
Seventh-grader Allison Wentzloff recalled spotting other kids wearing them in music class in early September.
“I asked if they were comfortable. I said, ‘These look cool and everybody’s wearing them,’ ” Allison said. Alexis Owens first saw her old friend from daycare, Kristen, wearing them.
“She said they were comfortable,” Alexis said. “So I thought I should get them ’cause I thought my tennis shoes were heavy.”
-Tom Bailey Jr.