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It’s a Shoe! It’s a Sandal! It’s Taking Over!
Guelph Mercury, Jul 28, 2006
They come in more colours than the rainbow. They’re soft, foamy and warm. And they’re all over the street.
Literally. Crocs are the newest fashion fad and their crayon colours are adorning all manner of feet, young and old, male and female.
It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing them on a boat like they were intended, in the garden where some people maintain they still belong, or to finish off a classy outfit.
Nurses and salespeople swear by them, saying they’re what you need to be able to stay on your feet all day long. People who work in the outdoors say they’re perfect because they dry fast. Locally, they’ve been dubbed the ideal footwear for this weekend’s Hillside festival.
They come in about 20 colours, in kid and adult sizes. There are flip-flop Crocs and soon, a more feminine Mary Jane. Which isn’t to say everyone loves them. They’ve been called chunky and clunky. One avid wearer said a friend called her pastel purple pair ‘Barney shoes’ after the friendly purple dinosaur.
“The first time I saw them, I thought ‘Why is someone wearing them out?’ ” said Kathy Boyce, a local fashion consultant.
“If somebody wants to wear these for comfort, they should buy a discreet colour.”
But brightness seems to be part of the allure.
“We had a doctor buy a pair of fuchsia and orange,” said Loretta Roper, evening supervisor at the Shoe-per Store in Guelph.
“(He said) the nurses were wearing all the fun colours, why can’t he?”
At that store, the quirky half-shoes, half-sandals are flying off the shelves as fast as they can stock them. In fact, employees keep a book under the counter with a 12-page list of people waiting to get the size and colour they’re after.
The store’s owner, Chandrakant Kothari, makes a sweeping gesture with his arm at several empty walls that were hung with Crocs in children’s sizes just a few days ago.
“I’m trying to figure it out myself,” he said. “This is a real phenomenon. This is just unexplainable.”
Even though they’re being snatched up by the uber-fashionable as well as grandmas and gardeners, local fashionistas seem to be giving the shoes a lukewarm reception, at best.
“There’s no way in hell I’d wear a pair of clogs,” said the Norwegian proprietor of Gloss, a high-fashion, Douglas Street shop.
Thomas Lofsnes points out clogs are popular among the Dutch and Swedish, but he shrugs off the craze.
“There’s weird things that come and go,” he said.
“They’ll quietly go away, that’s what I hope,” said Lori Stilwell, director of the school of fashion at Toronto’s International Academy of Design and Technology.
But Boyce isn’t so sure.
“They brought onto the market something that was missing,” she said.
Would she recommend them to anyone? “If they’re going for a boating outfit,” she said.
Tia Mattson, a spokesperson Crocs Inc.in Boulder, Colo., who keeps her own 20 or so pairs in what she calls a “Croc-pot” in her front hall, says they’re for everyone.
“We’re not just a fashionista shoe,” she said.
And she’s quick to point out the material, which she emphasizes is not plastic “it’s a proprietary, closed-cell resin” was actually invented in Canada.
“And they had some Italians design the styling, so it’s really an international effort,” she said.
That sits well with Vish Khanna, a local Crocs fan who had no idea he was buying into a trend.
“I don’t like socks. I hate sandals. This was the happy medium,” said the happy owner of a navy blue pair.
“It’s a little bit ‘shoey,’ a little bit ‘sandaly.’
“They’re like the hybrid vehicle of footwear.”
For him, Crocs mean a big break with tradition. “I kept buying the exact same shoe for 12 years,” he said. “Now, people have commented on my new fashion sense.”
-Magda Konieczna, Dave Carter
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