If for most of recent urban history the preferred form of footwear for men in a city was the shoe, we have definitively entered a new era — the Age of the Sandal. This decidedly unscientific observation is based on a recent walking tour of Manhattan from top to bottom — Inwood to Battery Park — on the East and West Sides. Though things may be different in other American urban centers, this reporter tends to doubt it.
Everywhere, in every setting, above and below ground, people — male-identified people — were flaunting their toes. Whether they were doing this because, as Women’s Wear Daily reported in July, we are in the middle of a booming sandals trend, or merely because it is so hot, who can know?
There is no question that luxury labels have leaped on the bandwagon. During the spring runway shows in Europe, designers paired safari jackets, “Miami Vice” pastels and drapey Armaniesque ’80s suits with footwear that gave full ventilation to heel and toe. Well before Justin Bieber was spotted exiting Bar Pitti in Greenwich Village in June shod in a pair of Mary Janes, a look that purportedly set off an instantaneous trend (never mind that Mary Janes are practically combat boots relative to Havaianas), lifestyle magazines as diverse as GQ and Ebony were already aggressively hyping skimpy footwear.
Sandals are now produced by labels that are world renowned, obscure and available at every price point. There are Greek fishermen sandals by the Copenhagen lifestyle company Vinny’s. There are slides like the ones Véronique Nichanian paired with relaxed-fit trousers and cashmere cardigans at Hermès. There are clog-style slip-ons like those produced by Rick Owens, Bottega Veneta and the Row. The Manolo Blahnik crisscross Otawi sandals are, at $675 a pair, an exorbitant version of the ones your uncle wears to grill hot dogs. There are, inevitably, Birkenstocks.
Let us pause for a moment to consider again the astonishing transformation of what was, at one time in the not-so-distant past, a niche hippie staple, mostly popular among commune dwellers and people who shopped in the Brattleboro Food Co-Op. Now, it’s the Type O blood of footwear, a fashion universal. Judging from my walking tour of Harlem, Midtown Manhattan, Greenwich Village and SoHo over several sweltering summer days, the sandal of the season is, without any doubt, the Birkenstock Arizona (or, for the more fashion forward, the big-buckle Madrid). Both models were so ubiquitous on city streets that it left little doubt as to why the 250-year-old company reported revenues of nearly $1.6 billion last year.
And while Birkenstocks provide marginally more foot coverage than the flip-flops that the designer Tom Ford once famously told People magazine he “wouldn’t be caught dead wearing,” they still produce an egregious display of toes perhaps not previously deemed suitable for city streets.
Yet, what constitutes suitability anymore? Even into the early decade of this century, visitors to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the neo-Gothic landmark in Midtown Manhattan, were encouraged to observe a dress code. Like those at houses of worship around the world, it was one that underscored modesty. Bare shoulders and, for women, uncovered heads were a no-no.
So, too, were miniskirts, shorts and sandals. Roughly 5.5 million people flood into the cathedral each year, and, inevitably, policing propriety has been forced to take a back seat to bag checks. Who has time to bust visitors for offending Tevas when the real possibility exists of people carrying weapons or explosives into public buildings? “Revealing” can be interpreted in many ways.
What, anyway, the designer Aaron Potts recently asked, does “revealing” mean anymore in terms of fashion? Whether seeking self-expression or relief from the heat, people routinely take to city streets dressed in rugby-style short shorts, bralettes, bikini tops, camisoles, tights so body-hugging and tops so sheer that a viewer may as well be wearing X-ray specs.
“I don’t like those rules of presentability,” Mr. Potts said. “Look, I work in fashion, and of course I want people to participate in it, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to think so much less about it as meaning how we present to others and more as self-expression.”
He has consciously liberated himself from judgments, he explained. Or at least he is making the attempt to avoid narrow, uncreative and often class-based impositions of personal taste that we once humorously passed off, in the ancient Joan Rivers era, as fashion policing. “Why should it matter to me what you choose to wear?” Mr. Potts asked.
The question is valid, yet it raises another: What is it about a display of digits in the city that people find unfortunate, if not quite egregious? Is it the feet themselves? (And here we are not speaking of those who wear sandals for cultural reasons or for ease of religious observance.) Or is it a creeping sensation that the line between what constitutes public and private spaces has become indistinguishable?
“I have never, ever worn slippers or sandals outside my house,” said Prasan Shah, a co-founder of the cult men’s wear label Original Madras Trading Company. He meant since coming to live in the United States. “I feel childish using this word, but it’s icky,” he said.
Until Mr. Shah came to this country at 16, he lived mainly in the steamy tropical South Indian city of Chennai, where sandals are worn in almost every setting. He said: “When my father sees me now in sneakers and socks, he’s like: ‘What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you hot?’”
It is one thing for designers and editors to propose open-toed sandals as the shoe of the moment, Mr. Shah said. It is another to slip on a pair and set out on a daily route that’s booby-trapped with used gum, trash, bottles of taxi driver tea and other less salubrious gunk.
“I just don’t want to expose my feet to all that,” he said.
Worse yet, the nattily suited designer said last week, wearing sandals in the city is like giving up your urban cred.
“Especially for those of us in our 20s and 30s, the excitement of being here is the urbanity,” Mr. Shah, 32, said. “Sure, if I was living in New Jersey, I’d be happy wearing my flip-flops to Target. But when I see flip-flops on the streets of New York City, am I rolling my eyes a little bit?”
It was a rhetorical question.
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