The ugly shoe is in

LONDON — Forget dainty kitten heels or towering stilettos. The sandal to be seen in this year is the “ugly shoe”: Footwear that is hefty, flat and defiantly unsexy.

Seen on the catwalks of Celine, Prada and Givenchy, the ugly shoe trend encapsulates a variety of styles, from Celine’s neoprene pool sliders to sequinned hiking sandals at Prada and Marc Jacobs to luxe, floral Birkenstock-inspired sandals at Givenchy.

All are united by an emphasis on chunkiness and comfort. Easy to recreate inexpensively, using rubber and Velcro, ugly shoes are big news in shops, too. “We haven’t seen such a fast-moving trend in flat shoes for a long time,” said Polly Thrussell, Senior Footwear Buyer at ASOS.com, the United Kingdom’s largest online-only fashion and beauty store. “Last year, 5 per cent of sales in flat shoes were driven by chunkier silhouettes. This year, we have planned for 60 per cent”

“They are probably outselling high heels,” said Maddy Evans, Buying Director at British multinational retailer Topshop. “There is such an appetite.”

As the name suggests, the new style is hard to love — at first. One furry blue version, by Celine, so incensed the London-based Daily Mail that the newspaper was compelled to ask: “Are these the world’s ugliest shoes?”. That said, the trend has been incubating, over a couple of seasons, among the more experimental sections of the fashion industry. For his Spring/Summer 2012 collection, Scottish fashion designer Christopher Kane sent models down the runway in metallic pool sliders. Soon afterwards, fashion bloggers and a few celebrities, such as singer Rita Ora, started wearing a far more affordable version: Plastic sliders by brands such as Nike and Adidas, which cost about £20 (S$42).

Though Natalie Kingham, the head of fashion at luxury designer fashion retailer matchesfashion.com, had a pair of the Christopher Kane originals, “it wasn’t until this summer that most people’s eyes seemed to readjust to them, and that translated to sales”.

“When I first saw them, they reminded me of the shoes we wore in the 1990s,” she said. “I remembered how popular they were then, and I thought about how well they would work with the current relaxed, sporty vibe.”

Indeed, in a year when Karl Lagerfeld sent models down the runway in trainers at the Chanel couture show — and with trend forecasters predicting that normcore, the act of studiously dressing plainly, will be the decade’s biggest fashion trend — it is perhaps no surprise that ugly shoes are being accepted.

“They are often called unsexy,” said Kingham, “and maybe they are not men’s favourite shoe for women to wear, and they can look slightly orthopaedic, but they make you look cool. They offer a lot of comfort; you can run around in them. I think they will be around for a few seasons.”

Thrussell agreed: “It’s a trend that offers comfort — and those are the ones that last. Since last season, when Stella McCartney-esque chunky ankle boots were a huge success, gradually our customers seem to have gotten used to a less sexy shoe; they are getting more experimental, wearing chunky sandals and jelly shoes with ankle socks. They are not styling the shoes with ugly clothes, but experimenting with footwear. We like to say that they are dressing from the feet up.” The GUARDIAN