How Ugly Shoes Went From Reviled to Revered

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ART BY SKYLI ALVAREZ

Lately, it seems the prevalence of ugly shoes has reached new heights. Literally, by way of caricatured runners and horse girl-lovin’ UGGs, and figuratively, with the rise of barely-there footwear on the horizon. In recent years, designers have even collaborated with styles that have been deemed “ugly” in the cultural zeitgeist. Simone Rocha with Crocs; Manolo Blahnik and Proenza Schouler with Birkenstocks; and Sandy Liang with Salomon. As we set foot into the new year and brace ourselves for the many more strange shoes to come, the weirdness doesn’t seem to be going anywhere but deeper into the recesses of the psyche. Eyes may be windows to the soul, but how we conceal (or exhibit), our soles may, too, be telling of all that goes unseen.

But first, what makes a shoe earn its ugly title? Many are either supremely comfortable or utterly impractical in design — on one side of the spectrum lie fur-lined Crocs; on the other, Alexander McQueen hoove boots — yet all lead to intrigue. Whether shoes are ugly because of convenience or unconventional because of ugliness, our fascination with hideous footwear extends far beyond the current moment. It’s much older, and stranger, than any pair of toe-hugging flats for hiking or snoafers.

“Historically, new fashions are often met with criticism,” Elizabeth Semmelhack, director and senior curator at Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada, tells Teen Vogue. “When shoe buckles came into fashion in the 17th century, the ‘establishment’ — read older people — criticized them as a youthful craze.” Having gradually replaced ribbons and tied shoes, the buckle’s initial design was fairly simple. Though as the accessory “went on to define footwear fashions in the 18th century, even becoming essential to court dress in Europe,” its range grew tenfold. Members of the upper class soon donned ornamental buckles featuring precious stone and animal horn inlay, for the greater the opulence, the greater the wealth. After the French Revolution, the buckle largely fell out of fashion for the very reason it entered popularity: its well-exhausted association with excess.

The appeal of luxury waxes and wanes, but few historical ugly shoes reflect status as clearly as the Venetian chopines, a personal favorite of Semmelhack. Popular in Italy and Spain across the 1500s, these wooden megaplatforms reached as tall as 22 inches by the end of the century. The raised sole was first designed to protect against mud but went on to signify the wearer and her family’s nobility and textile wealth. An abundance of skirt fabric was used to conceal the shoes, which required assistance to walk in. The new heights of contemporary platforms are nothing compared to these clogs of extravagance.

In the case of buckles and raised soles, functionality is taken to new extremes and the shoes become more about visual appeal than practicality. They’re aestheticized to the point of caricature. A longstanding joke of 16th-century Europe was that of the “half-wood-half-woman,” often made about courtesans who mimicked the dress of those wealthier than them. To admirers, the styles were a thrill; to critics, a farce. The same silhouette takes on new meaning from wearer to wearer, and conscious or not, the apparent novelty of such trends have played a role in their rise and fall.

“It is all in how the shoes are being worn and by whom,” Semmelhack explains, as the wearer often says much more about the shoe than the shoe does itself. “The ‘Dad’ shoe is an example: On a middle-aged father it says one thing, on his teenager, it says another,” she continues. Think of Balenciaga’s already-dirtied sneakers, an ultra-exaggeration of the everyday running shoe that looks as if it’s inhibited by its own design. “By wearing them in a context [of being] so cool, they would never be caught dead in those things, [wearers] imply they’re even further ahead of the curve,” says Ben van Buren, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research.

Such is the case with so-called “sensible shoes” cementing their names in the fashion industry. Though Crocs and Birks were once reviled, irony (and comfort) is in part responsible for their ascendance into the realm of couture. The pearly studded clogs of Simone Rocha’s imagination are a far cry from the muddied jibbitz of childhood. And now, anyone can adorn theirs with friendship bracelets, lockets, and stuffed animals.

To Semmelhack, the unexpected, yet highly intentional design is core to the ugly shoe. When stylist Fiona Chernavskaya and her friends began wearing Vibram FiveFingers to workout sessions, she recalled other gymgoers’ amusement, which turned to genuine curiosity for the experience of the shoe. “Unusual things will stand out and capture attention. And that’s important, especially in a world where there’s just so much stimulation” van Buren elaborates. “As for why people are attracted to this? I mean, life gets boring.”

Despite times of strife, resourcefulness has kept the unusual alive and breathing, perhaps no more perfectly captured in modern history than the 1930s. “It was during this period of economic depression that some of the most innovative new shoes were created,” Semmelhack explains, citing André Perugia and Salvatore Ferragamo’s introduction of wedged heels, platform soles, and shoes with upturned toes into the lexicon of mainstream wear. “Shoes were seen as an affordable accessory that could be used to update a woman’s wardrobe and so increased pressure was being put on footwear to be fashionable.”

Such designers fused wearability and appearance, working around interwar shortage of leather and textile imports, and in 1937, Ferragamo patented the wedge. Like the chopine’s thick wooden base, this new Italian silhouette offered space for design and ornamentation — mosaic mirrors, grooving, and painted motifs. In 1947, he created the Invisible shoe: a minimalist sandal with transparent nylon weave. Through illusion and muted design, it’s quite comparable to contemporary barefoot footwear, like an elegant predecessor to Balenciaga Zeros.

“What history shows is that often what is deemed ugly becomes mainstream over time,” Semmelhack says. “It is fascinating to chart that change and try to unlace, as it were, the reasons why and how culture shifts.”

As for the future of ugly shoes? The curator cites Scry’s sculptural footwear and the possibilities of 3D printing to yield “never-before-seen shapes” in years to come, much like the changing silhouettes of the ‘30s. Platforms (not the shoes, but the sites) such as Ap0cene spotlight indie designers with anthropomorphic four-toe pumps and puffy clogs, in a continued push for “even more distorted and unnatural designs,” as Chernavskaya sees it.

Perhaps, more people will take experimentation into their own hands. “I recently bought some air dry clay and sculpted a beak and chicken feet onto a heel, painted it, and covered it in feathers,” Chernavskaya says. “Bam. Chicken shoe.”

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue