Picture a hearty russet, spartan and ovoid. Its curves swell like a Botero sculpture. Its sides bulge like a raft. Enlarge it once or twice, and this potato could perfectly fit your foot.
If this sounds like a peculiar metric for a successful shoe, consider the cornucopia of tuberous footwear already available. What is the Ugg slipper — perennial favorite of surfers, sorority girls and, more recently, high-fashion fans — if not a Yukon Gold with especially fluffy insides? And tell me that Birkenstock’s classic suede Boston clog doesn’t look just like a German Butterball, plucked from the garden.
Several examples from my own shoe collection could be described as suitably yammy, reflecting the bumper crop of bulbous shoes that have hit the market in the past half-decade. There are deep chestnut clogs from the Spanish luxury house Loewe and wide-set slip-ons from the Finnish comfort shoe brand VIBAe.
Still, my hunger for this shape remains insatiable. When images of new, brown-as-dirt mules from the Los Angeles luxury label ERL hit my inbox last month, I caught my cursor hovering over the “add to bag” button.
The Potato Pendulum
Just as hemlines rise and fall to reflect the mores of that moment, so too do shoes swing from pointy to paunchy.
There’s a “longstanding tradition” of potato-like shoes to address concerns of health and comfort, according to Elizabeth Semmelhack, the director and senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.
She said wider shapes often begin to show up once footwear became cruelly restrictive. Around the suffragist movement of the 1910s and early ’20s, for example, women wore lace-up boots with stubby, “bulldog nose” toes — a middle toe aimed at the “very, very pointy” high heels that came before.
Today’s potato shoes, Ms. Semmelhack speculated, are more closely related to the orthopedic styles of the ’70s. As organic grocers and yoga studios bloomed in America during this decade, shoppers were charmed by footwear that might, somehow, improve their well-being. That big one was the “Earth Shoe,” a quaggy Danish import, with a foot bed like mashed potatoes. In 1973, Earth Shoe’s sales hit $2.5 million.
“The college crowd first discovered the shoes three years ago and was attracted to their back‐to‐nature appearance,” noted a New York Times article in 1974 on the Earth Shoe’s success.
The Earth Shoe faded in time, but fresh rotund designs kept appearing. A 1994 Times article called the Nike Air Moc — a cinchable, laceless bag for your foot — a “potato shoe.” This frumpy foot sac was everything an Air Jordan was not.
That same decade, skateboard brands like DC, Etnies and Globe began marketing ludicrously large sneakers. They arrived as a seeming alternative to the ur-skate shoe, gossamer Vans slip-ons. Designed to cushion the wearer’s foot, these sneakers looked like baked potatoes, seconds from eruption.
Peak Potato Shoe Era
This moment, though, makes all previous potato shoe boomlets feel like blips and epitomizes the triumph of comfort over hype.
It traces back to the pandemic. Shuffling around in their suddenly shrunken universes, unsure of when a return to the “real world” might come, shoppers began craving shoes that were easy on their feet, and easier on their minds. They embraced the slip-on potato-shaped shoe.
In 2020, Hypebeast, a streetwear news site known for salivating over Jordans and Dunks, hailed Birkenstock Bostons as “the perfect shoe of the moment.” Two years later, interest in the shoes hadn’t cooled as they landed at No. 2 on the Lyst Index’s hottest products.
The Boston “is the archetype,” said Jian DeLeon, the men’s fashion director at Nordstrom, who on the side operates Mule Boyz, an Instagram account which since 2017 has cataloged the deluge of don’t-think-twice slip-on shoes.
The Boston was but one ugly duckling turned prom king by the pandemic. Sales of $50 Crocs peaked during 2021. Today, collaborations with designers and cultural properties like the British fashion label Simone Rocha and “South Park” continue to keep Crocs in the conversation.
“It’s just comfort and convenience,” said Mr. DeLeon, summing up the prevailing mood of this period.
The Evolution of the Birkenstock Boston
As more imitators have emerged, a barrage of dupes have pushed Birkenstock to invent fresh varieties of its clog. They now offer the Naples, a backless shoe with the across-the-toe panel of a penny loafer, as well as Bostons fit for chefs, with pronounced rubber soles. A shearling-lined version of the Bostons vie with Uggs.
Thibo Denis, a French designer who works for Louis Vuitton, is one of a slew of collaborators who worked with Birkenstock on new designs for its higher-end 1774 line. It was “a dream opportunity,” he said.
Mr. Denis, who says he has always felt a pull toward exaggerated footwear, said a jumbo-scale shoe not only finishes your silhouette, “it gives the character of your silhouette.”
Released this fall, his Birkenstock partnership included a lumbering suede clog that looks like a potato with laces. Now that it’s out in the world, Mr. Denis wishes it bulged even a bit wider around his size 9 feet.
“I don’t want to be interpreted as an oversized designer,” Mr. Denis said. “But the foot needs space.”
The Long Shadow of the Yeezy Foam Runner
To keep shoppers spending, brands and designers began pushing the boundaries of what a puffy shoe could look like.
“A lot of it is based on the very shallow pool of trend research where it’s like, ‘Hey, everybody’s wearing these wider shoes, let’s do some,’” said Dal Chodha, a lecturer of fashion communication at Central Saint Martins University in London.
To his eyes, Kanye West’s Yeezy Foam Runner, which debuted in June 2020, remains influential. Those long and lumpy shoes, in “Dune”-like shades, “felt so organic, but in a way that didn’t feel dainty,” Mr. Chodha said.
Not all brands have been so conceptual. Mostly, what we’ve seen in recent years is a series of Birkenstock Boston clones. Prada, Brunello Cucinelli, Isabel Marant, Fendi and Burberry have offered squint-and-they’re-similar mules. Lululemon sells a russet clog. As do Shein, Steve Madden and Quince.
My Potato Conversion
So, how did I get pulled to the potato shoe? You could say I was primed for it. As a teenager I relished my fat-tongued Emerica skate shoes and the Birkenstocks that made my disproportionally large feet look even blockier.
After college, I gave them up. Until, of course, the pandemic. Idling at home, I, too, bought Bostons and tuned in as the footwear industry sidelined sneakers in favor of fat clogs.
I watched Instagram accounts that once posted about the next Adidas Ultraboost devote attention to gorp-y slip-ons. They hyped slope-soled “recovery” clogs by Oofos, the Japanese brand Subu’s inflated slippers, tiny puffer jackets for your feet, and Keen’s Shanti slides. Intrigued, I bought the latter. When I wore them, my feet looked like they were being attacked by a xenomorph. I loved them.
Why, I wondered, had I been squeezing my feet into stubborn dress shoes all this time? I sold off my double monks and lace-ups, confident that I could replace them when the inevitable return to the real world arrived. I did, with expansive Loewe loafers that allow my toes to sprawl.
Recently though, I’ve noticed the counter-push toward shoes that are thin, slender, barely there. We are witnessing another one of those reactive trend fluctuations that Ms. Semmelhack studied.
Retro shoes of the ’70s, like wafer-thin Adidas Sambas and Onitsuka Tigers, are being billed by fashion publications as the big thing. So-named “ballerina” sneakers are on offer from designer brands like Ralph Lauren and Prada.
I am only human, and I too can fall victim to trends. So I bought a pair of wispy Dries Van Noten sneakers with a sole that couldn’t have been more than a centimeter thick. When I wore them, I could feel every pebble I passed over. My heel hurt from impact.
The next day, I went back to my potato shoes.
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
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