It cannot be denied that the Italian brand Miu Miu is a reliable weather vane to know which way the wind of trends is blowing. Two years after reintroducing the low-waisted miniskirt (which sparked a fascination with everything related to the year 2000), the latest object of desire from Prada’s sister brand is the quintessence of style preppy of the turn of the century, or what is the same, of posh clothing: boat shoes. Shoes that were born with a radically practical purpose and that ended up being a symbol of social status, or at least, of its aspiration.
At the show for the spring-summer 2024 season, stylist Lotta Volkova placed a large selection of boat shoes at the feet of the models. But not just any ones: those of Miu Miu, made of leather and priced at 720 euros, they appear to have had some use. The detail of its strategically worn leather exudes aesthetics. old money: You may not need a boat to take them, but they manage to convey that you have just docked your Bénéteau in the port of Saint-Tropez. They don’t look brand new, nor new, but something better: they look like those of a character from Saltburn. The Miu Miu effect has already had its echo among the masses and according to data from the trend analyst Data But Make It Fashion, In the month of March alone, boat shoes gained 170% in popularity on the internet.
But Miu Miu, alone, has not created this trend. Jonathan Anderson has created his own version at Loewe, Bally is reinventing this spring a feminine model with some heel which it has called Plume and brands as diverse as Off-White, Dries Van Noten, Loro Piana, Tod’s or the New York brand Aimé Leon Doré , specialized in crossing urban fashion and preppy, They repeat nautical shoes in their latest seasons. There’s more: Zara has already released four models. But why would a nautical be relevant in 2024?
First of all, it seems that the current version of the varsity style pays homage and puts the focus on the style of the early ’90s. As Guillermo Arenas said in Icon, “before the recovery of the espadrille, it was the choice of the wealthy classes (and those who aspired to be so) when the heat invited a more informal outfit. It was worn by both commercial pop stars and politicians on vacation, always without socks.” Boat shoes saw imitations emerge at affordable prices, but unlike what happened with other posh garments, such as the polo shirt, they never completely shed their elitist reputation.
The nautical, however, was created for another purpose. In 1935, Paul Sperry, an American magnate with a passion for sailing, created the first nautical shoe. Inspiration came from observing how his Cocker spaniel, Prince, kept his balance on ice and snow. The ridged surface of the pads was the key for Sperry to create rubber soles with grooves that increased traction: he glued them to the shoe and thus the boat shoes were born.
Sperry’s first shoes had black soles, but he soon realized that they left marks on the decks of ships, so he changed them to white. It was some time before the boat shoes, as they were baptized, achieved massive popularity. This happened after Sperry won a contract from the US Navy to manufacture his boat shoes for sailors.
One of the labels that have marked the fandom of the nautical is Sebago. Founded in 1946 on the American east coast by three friends, the first shoe they launched was a hand-sewn moccasin. In 1970, Sebago launched its most recognizable model to date, the iconic Dockside boat shoe (which is still sold) and which over the years has been worn by personalities such as Pharrell Williams, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Kate Middleton.
During the 1980s, Sebago Docksides became a hot trend in colleges and high schools across the United States, as mentioned in The Official Preppy Handbook by Lisa Birnbach, which was something like the manual explaining who the people were and how they acted. preppy American people. The shoe became a staple and emblematic of East Coast American preppy style in the summer months.
The nineties were also the years of the Sloane Rangers, portrayed in another book (The Official Sloane Ranger Hand Book, 1982), young British women eager for social success whose center of the universe was London’s Sloane Square. The sloanes they did not seek to be cool but they did want to dress like their Chelsea tribe: poplin shirts under a cable-knit sweater, tight pants, red socks and Sebagos. Diana of Wales was its main representative. By then nautical shoes were part and sign of a social stratum, and the formula was exported to many countries. In Spain in the nineties he triumphed.
Perhaps due to its high symbolic value, the boat shoe has sometimes served as a blank canvas for experimentation: Kanye West designed white boat shoes for Louis Vuitton back in 2009 and the group indie Vampire Weekend claimed it at that time, but apart from these interventions, nautical remained conservative territory.
In fact, today it is still very common to find them in certain environments: a walk through the Salamanca neighborhood of Madrid between May and October is enough to conclude that to wear them you don’t even need to be near the sea. It is the acceptable shoe when you cannot wear sneakers. But if we look at the portrait that the series Succession made the so-called 1%, among the richest the nautical has its particular way of use. “Sorry, are we talking on the stern of a majestic schooner? Is that salt that stings my weather-beaten skin? No? “So, why the hell are you wearing boat shoes?” Tom Wambsgans criticized Greg Hirsch for his outfit in the first season of the series. The cousin was nothing more than a ‘nouveau riche’ but he could now argue that he is a fashionable man.
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