Guess what

I wore in
London,
Milan and
Paris
My absolutely
fabulous
£85 Crocs
Once the shoes you slipped on to put the bins out,
Crocs are now officially a thing. About time too,
says fashion editor Harriet Walker – she’s wearing
hers on the front row at this month’s catwalk shows

Harriet Walker photographed by Tom Jackson. Far left and this picture: Crocs x Aries
Classic Hiker Xscape, £85 (endclothing.com). Left: Siren clogs, £69.99 (crocs.co.uk)

n Milan, fashion is a religion.
I
Perhaps that is why the sharply
dressed nonna in the Piazza della
Scala is staring as though I am the
Antichrist. It is the golden hour of
passeggiata – on a Friday evening
during Fashion Week – a ritual
that sees the city’s many wardrobe
worshippers don their most elegant
looks simply to stroll its streets, and
I am wearing a pair of Crocs.
She clearly hasn’t realised that the
hole-punched plastic clogs on my feet
are the front-row version, rather than the
regular gardening or dog-walking variety.
These Crocs aren’t the ones you put
on to take out the bins or to pad around
the edge of the swimming pool avoiding
verrucas. They are the result of a
collaboration between the kids’ and
healthcare workers’ favourite – a company
based in Broomfield, Colorado, and
estimated to be worth $5 billion – and the
ultra-cool London streetwear label Aries.
Their braided purple trim, Velcro
straps decorated with Doric columns and
platform sole mark them out as one of this
season’s hottest must-haves. Twinkling on
my toe caps are little charms that fellow
Crocolytes will know are called Jibbitz
– not the usual teenager rainbow emojis
and hearts, but limited-edition seashells,
mineral stones and a trendy ’shroom.
The Aries Crocs cost £85 and sold out
in under 48 hours when they launched
last month. Then they sold out again. I am
wearing mine with a beige midiskirt that,
ten years ago, might have required a heel
but now doesn’t, and a Gucci handbag.
I know perfectly well that everything
about these shoes is ridiculous, and yet
I love them. A few Italian men, sockless
and in designer loafers, seem offended.
“I don’t hate them,” says the front-
row doyenne Suzy Menkes, a venerated
former fashion editor of this paper and
the International Herald Tribune, now a
Vogue columnist, when I take my place
next to her at that night’s Versace show.
“They do look very comfortable. But
I wouldn’t wear them.”
It’s a more generous response than
the fashion friend who simply texted “no”
when I sent her a photo. This is progress:
her response to my first pair – the gateway
drug, as I now think of them – was “yuck”.
Crocs is rumoured to sell 100 million
pairs per year and make $9.7 million
GETTY IMAGES, COURTESY OF HARRIET WALKER
(£8 million) a day. Its clogs have become
as much of a perennial as Converse All-
Stars and Nike Airs, only more useful.
Most of the Gen Z kids making Crocs look
cool have owned a pair since they took
their first steps. Like many of them, Crocs
turned 20 last year.
Has there ever been an item of clothing
that has inspired as much contempt? This
was why the Scottish designer Christopher
Kane put footwear’s untouchables on his
Harriet Walker at the Saint Laurent show in Paris
two weeks ago wearing her £85 Crocs
Above left and below: guests at Copenhagen Fashion
Week. Above right: influencer Alina Kossan, Berlin
Nobody at Chanel is
wearing Crocs. But
one person does take
a picture of my feet
catwalk in 2016. “Everyone hated them,”
he tells me. “So that was an instant pull.
People were so spiteful about them, but
I just saw them on little kids, doctors and
nurses. Those people save lives. Crocs just
looked kind of cool and clinical to me.”
Kane studded his marbled version
with glinting minerals and gemstones
and charged £200 for them. Now a rare
find, they sell on designer resale sites for
double that.
My first pair were a homage: £35.99
classic clogs in swirly green that I “curated”
with metallic star, crescent moon and
pumice Jibbitz, and always wear in what
fans call “sports mode” (with the ankle
strap flipped forwards – much cooler).
They have been constant companions
on the school run and in the playgrounds
of Peckham all this summer and last.
Someone in a local restaurant – yes,
I wore them on date night – said they were
“sick”. For the avoidance of confusion,
that is a good thing among the age
demographic of the person who said it.
There is only one place my Crocs
didn’t come with me this summer and that
was on holiday. To France. I am happy
being Croc woman in southeast London,
where everyone has pink hair and I am
often the straightest person in the queue
for sourdough, but I couldn’t face the
pointed looks and unconcealed mirth
among the ballet pumps in the
boulangerie. I needn’t have worried:
on our first outing to the big Carrefour,
almost everyone I saw was in a pair.
That’s why, a week after Milan,
I take the Aries ones with me to Paris
Fashion Week. To a city where I once
heard someone tut when a woman arrived
on the front row wearing jeans.
I am drinking a coffee at the Ritz when
I notice two young Frenchwomen talking
to each other, eyes locked on my feet.
Are those… admiring glances they are
throwing my way?
“Elle n’est pas chinoise,” one says
to the other as they walk past me.
“Non, mais elle est riche,” comes
the response.
Are these the only two categories of
people who wear Crocs in Paris? I decided
to head to the Chanel boutique on Rue
Cambon to find out.
It is earlyish: photographer hour, in
which the rich women and influencers
staying at fancy hotels nearby step out
with their hired snappers to get outfit
pics for Instagram. Some are stylish,
The Times Magazine 77
 On the catwalk, models
are wearing shoes inspired
by freebie hotel slippers
some are not, but the effect is a sort of rush hour for
clowns. There are so many outlandishly dressed people
around that my Crocs – despite one having a chunk of
fools’ gold on the right toe – are practically sober attire.
Many of the Parisiennes whose judgment I feared schlep
past in Birkenstock Bostons – ubiquitous slip-ons whose
newly chic status has managed to take the edge off even
a plastic version with fake jewels stuck on.
When I reach the Saint Laurent boutique, I see
the model Camille Rowe in a leather skirt and 6in
heels being dropped off by a suited chauffeur at 9.45am.
I wore my Crocs only the night before at the label’s show
and nobody batted an eyelid, would you Adam and Yves
it. Passing the Élysée Palace, I half expect me and my
Crocs to be cautioned by a gendarme for crimes against
the French and their libido. I doubt very much that the
Macrons have a pair between them.
Up ahead is an office where I once interviewed
the model Ines de la Fressange and she told me
Frenchwomen don’t wear leggings or those bras with
clear plastic straps. I sprained my ankle after the meeting
and had to get on the Eurostar on crutches; I imagine
Ines would opt for those over Crocs any day. A few
office workers already out on cigarette breaks clock my
feet and exhale impassively while meaningfully making
eye contact.
By the time I reach Chanel, a queue has formed
outside behind a little velvet rope. Nobody in it is
wearing Crocs, but none of them is in heels either.
I cannot bring myself to line up for a shop as though
it is a fairground attraction, so I loiter opposite instead.
When the doors open and I cross the road, one of the
people in the queue – a Chinese tourist – takes a picture
of my feet.
“Welcome to Chanel!” The retail staff say it to
STYLING: HANNAH ROGERS. HAIR AND MAKE-UP: LUCIE PEMBERTON USING NARS AND LIVING PROOF. BLACK JUMPER,

everybody who crosses the threshold, no exceptions,

no up-and-down shame-rake. I suspect they have gone
ALTUZARRA (MATCHESFASHION.COM). BROWN TOP, TOVE-STUDIO.COM, WHITE JEANS, JIGSAW-ONLINE.COM

on a training course where the “big mistake” scene in

Pretty Woman featured prominently. In a shop where
everything costs more than £1,000 and everyone apart
from me can afford that, my shoe choice is their least
concern anyway.
These shop assistants will have seen not just
Crocs; they will have seen £500 Balenciaga Crocs
– which come with a kitten heel and are called “Crocs
Madame” (arf). They will have seen £700 glitter rubber
rainboots from Bottega Veneta. In the next window
along is a pair of £650 yellow-heeled plastic galoshes
by Burberry. At the recent London Fashion Week,
Simone Rocha’s pearl and diamante-encrusted black
Crocs look set to be the hit accessory of next season.
Next I mooch to Monoprix, which sells beautiful
French children’s clothes that used to seem cheap and
now cost roughly the same as a three-course meal.
Browsing the rails of spriggy-print blouses and bon chic,
bon genre corduroy ensembles, it is apparent that none
of the well turned out little French people wearing them
will be doing so with plastic clogs. Before I go to my next
front-row seat at the impossibly chic stealth-wealth label
the Row, I change into a pair of brown leather Grenson
sandals. On the catwalk, the models are wearing shoes
inspired by freebie hotel slippers. It’ll never catch on. n