Are We Too Uptight About Feet?

It’s mid-August, which means we have arrived at the point of summer in which I must, once again, talk about sandals.

Yesterday, my colleague Simbarashe Cha published a photo essay of all of the open toes he encountered at Copenhagen Fashion Week. Some of the comments devolved into quibbles about whether some of the sandals were actually flip-flops (this is the “is a hot dog a sandwich?” debate for shoes). But mostly, they were split between those who see flip-flops as a sensible item to wear in the heat and those who, with self-possessed authority, declare that toes should never be seen.

When did we become so uptight about toes? My editors and I kicked this question around on yesterday morning. (One of us was wearing sandals. I will not name names.)

I landed on the notion that it’s not sandaled feet walking around in real life that bother us so much as it is images of those feet. Once sharing endless photos of oneself online became a norm, an outfit was no longer a fleeting thing.

The internet perpetuates a certain gawking over our bodies. You once wore flip-flops simply because it was hot. Now, long after you have kicked off those Tevas, your toes — yes, your slightly gnarled, maybe hairy, but probably perfectly fine toes! — live on, on Facebook or Instagram, and you have to contend with everyone’s strident feelings about them.

It’s reminiscent of a conversation from a couple of years ago about men’s short inseams. Men used to just wear shorts. Then TikTok had them convinced that they had to wear shorts with exactly a 5-inch inseam to show off the audience-approved amount of upper leg.

Sandals, much like shorts, as I wrote about last week, have also become fraught because they expose a part of our body that isn’t always seen.

This is what makes them provocative to fashion designers. Matthieu Blazy knew he would stoke controversy when he introduced Chanel’s toe-freeing half-shoe on the runway. The wrongness of naked toes tickles a certain dresser’s need to be intrepid. (We’re talking about women here, but I’ve seen many of my male friends bare their toes recently. The “rules be damned, here are my blocky, hairy toes” look may offend people’s sense of good taste. My toe-flashing friends would say that’s the point.)

Cha photographed heeled Ganni sandals with a wavy band, like the rippling surface of a pool; sundry flat flip-flops; and a set of Italian-made Flòwze sandals with webbed straps like climbing rope. Few of the women had polish on their toenails, as if the insouciance of their footwear had to be echoed by their bodies.

Uh oh, have I tripped the line there? By commenting on these women’s toes, have I tread into ick territory? Here’s where I’ll admit that I don’t have a problem with people wearing flip-flops. I write this on another 90-degree day in New York. I have no quibbles with people taking any measure to be mildly less sweaty.

Unlike shorts at work, though, this is not something I’d risk myself. At least not anywhere there will be photo evidence. I’m not confident enough in my feet for that.

Other things worth knowing about:

It’s hard to know what effect it’s having on sales (if any), but Zac Posen, the Gap designer, sure is good at getting famous people into his custom clothes. This past weekend, Charli XCX performed at the Outside Lands music festival in a denim GapStudio moto jacket mini dress.
I keep going back to these two slide shows (one, two) of people on the streets of London in 1994. The range of hats alone!
Good news for people who live to say, “Actually, this isn’t a T-shirt, it’s a T-shirt made in Japan”: Beams opened its Malibu location.
Steff Yotka is the new editor in chief of i-D magazine. I’m biased: Steff is a dear friend (and a genius), but I’m very excited to see what she does at the helm.

I Wore Shorts. You Had Thoughts.

You all had a lot of things to say about my foray into wearing shorts to work. Mostly, you, well, thought I looked terrible. The comments on the Instagram post and article were scathing. It has become a truism of the internet, but I was surprised by how many people were willing to be mean to someone they didn’t know. I have upped my therapy visits for the rest of the summer to work through these critiques. I’ll be billing each and every one of you for your share, thanks so much! (Kidding.)

In sincerity, it was an amusing exercise in putting oneself out there online. Mere minutes after the newsletter went out, a reader wrote to me that my new level of body consciousness might give me “just an inkling of how women feel ALL the time when we dress.” It did. I thought about the sentiment all weekend as I scrolled through the responses to my article. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on how I, a 34-year-old man who is perfectly content with his personal style, should dress. So much of this advice was conflicting.

My shorts should’ve been longer, some suggested, below the knee only. No, no, they should’ve been shorter, to show off more leg. My shirt should’ve been tucked in. Actually, I should’ve worn a polo instead. My loafers were too “old” (I’ve had them for about only a month). I should’ve swapped them out for sneakers, or deck shoes, or actually, no wait, sandals. In my shorts, I symbolized a “downward spiral” ruining this country.

My socks — oh my socks! You all were fixated on my white socks. They were “slouchy tube socks.” They were a “fashion fail.” They were “cheap.” (In truth, they are cheap — $5.90 at Uniqlo. But they’re more dressy than athletic.) Many were proponents of no-show socks. Others insisted that I should’ve instead worn black dress socks. No wait, “white socks are cool,” but black socks are bad. I should’ve worn no socks at all.

All of this conflicting guidance made me think anew about how a “good” outfit is very much a relative thing. I liked how my button-up shirt fell straight across at the hem. The volume of the shorts was practical — If I’m going to be sweating, I’d rather have wider shorts that sit off my thighs. The white socks, to me, clashed well with the black shoes.

Mostly, I just can’t picture myself in a tucked in golf polo with black dress socks and deck shoes. That’s not me. A few of my friends texted me that they thought I looked good in the photo. I looked like myself, the Jacob they know. I admit, I liked the outfit too. I still do. Even after all of the comments.

What I read and liked:

“I’ve never seen a kitchen island like that.” I giggled all the way through this interview with Sami Reiss, a design critic, about the basketball player LaMelo Ball’s residence in Charlotte, N.C.
We exist in a world in which a Knicks hat is “fashion’s hottest product.” And because I’ll take any excuse to post it, here’s OG Anunoby’s winning tip-in from Game 4 once again. Magical!
There’s some more remarkable ’80s hair on display in the “Paper Tiger” trailer.
I am a big fan of T magazine’s “Style Detective” feature. I savored this latest one, where Angela Koh tracks down the costume designer from “Before Sunset” to ID a jacket from more than 20 years ago.
This skit starring Barack Obama from Larry David’s newish HBO show (a show no one I know watches, produced by the Obamas’ production company), in which the former president knowingly mocks his tan suit, has almost two million views on YouTube in two days. Obama’s transformation into a pure pop culture figure is pretty much complete at this point. This week, he also announced that he was becoming a podcaster.

“I remember, and I don’t know why, that I was wearing a fashionable new Ralph Lauren shirt — brown with a touch of white gray stripes — and Calvin Klein jeans with Gucci loafers.”

— The character Bret in the first episode of “The Shards.” Based on Bret Easton Ellis’s 2023 novel, this FX show is a bit disjointed and plodding, but it looks fantastic. True to Ellis’s fixation on consumerism, it’s all brand names, BMWs and big hair. It also captures well how the infusion of money in the early 1980s altered American style. In came the slick European labels and the shrunken ’fits. Still, I can’t imagine it’ll have the impact of Ryan Murphy’s last series, “Love Story.” Let me know if you’re watching.

On that Phoebe Philo ad in Erotic Review

When I opened the spring/summer issue of Erotic Review, a literary magazine in Britain that I profiled last week, I was surprised to stumble upon a multifold ad for the designer Phoebe Philo. As I flipped through the pages, though, it made a lot of sense: Erotic Review is no bottom-shelf sex magazine. It’s also of a piece with Philo’s idiosyncratic vision of female sexuality: Those of us who hang on her campaign imagery can glean that it’s cerebral … and a little freaky. Much like the magazine. I learned, while reporting my piece on the Review, that the brand will also have an ad in the forthcoming fall issue. The magazine’s editors, Lucy Roeber and Saskia Vogel, tell me they don’t own any Phoebe. — Marie Solis