Are ladies clog shoes still in fashion?

Fashion for odd but comfortable ladies clog shoes continues. We have already told you how comfortable slips, garden boots, and hikers have come into our wardrobes. Now it’s all about the clogs. As Lyst analysts predicted, the models as shoes on a wooden sole would become the fashion shoes of winter. We want to find out how the clogs made their way from Dutch farmers to Dior and Hermes podiums and why everyone loves them so much.

Where from clogs appeared.

It’s hard to determine when the clogs came into being. According to some sources, the first references to wooden shoes date back to the thirteenth century. We can say that the ancestors of the clogs were klomps: traditional Dutch shoes made of wood. They did not seem to be very comfortable (also, as says Smithsonian, they severely damaged the legs causing a disease called osteochondritis, or Kenig’s disease, characterized by “decomposition of a small piece of cartilage from the adjacent bone with its displacement into the joint cavity”). But they protected the legs from moisture and were very inexpensive. Peasants and fishers liked them. As time passed, a variety of variations of klomps appeared in other countries; in France, for example, they were sabots. It is noteworthy that according to some opinions of linguists, the word “Sabo” came from a combination of the words “savate” (old shoe) and “bot” (boot), and “savate” came from the word “sabbat”. So since we proclaimed witches as icons of feminism, we can consider that wooden slippers also have specific properties, like crystals.

Another well-known version of clogs was Swedish Treskor shoes with a wooden platform having a small heel, the top of which was made of leather and decorated with rivets. This version of shoes was at its peak in the 1970s – thanks to the ABBA band. Musicians on a wave of general love for shoes on a wooden platform made a collaboration with Tretorn’s shoe brand by releasing a sabo with their logo. At about the same time, the male half of the band- Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson released a song called “Treskofolket”, or “The Clog People”. Cult celebrities of the 1970s such as Stevie Nicks, the lead singer of Fleetwood Mac, singer Janis Joplin, Freddie Mercury, the soloist of Queen, actress Isabel Ajani and other hippie icons of that era followed ABBA.

How clogs became fashionable again.

It is difficult to remember that clogs disappeared for a long time. Their next revival happened in the 2010s when famous women like Alexa Chang, Chloe Sevigny, and Mary Kate Olsen set the trend for Sabo with rivets again (all the favorites were Swedish brand Swedish Hasbeens clogs). However, two years later the ladies clog shoes (and all the bright objects of one or another epoch) were declared as a fashion mistake until the designers started to understand the most “ugly” trends from the history of fashion. We can see various models of сlogs in collections of Celine (Edie Slimane is called one of the main popularizers of clogs for his love to 1970s), Finnish brand Aalto, Englishwoman Margaret Howell, Hermes, Stella McCartney, JW Anderson, and other famous designers. French magazine Vogue called this trend for the fashion for clogs: which seems not to be going away.

Lyst released a small report about new trends in July and announced that “clogs will become the main comfy-ugly trend (comfortable and ugly shoes in the best sense) of the winter” according to the results. Based on their data, the number of search queries about clogs is increasing every month, and the most popular models have officially become Birkenstock Boston and JW Anderson models.

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We can explain the growing popularity of clogs in two ways. First, the brands have been focusing on “anti-moda” and utilitarianism for several years already. The trend lists include boots and tight dresses, slips, windbreakers, bicycle glasses. It is a comfort that customers value the most now: especially in the conditions of a pandemic when almost all their life has moved home and they want to wear the most comfortable stuff. It is quite natural that the clogs of all sorts have entered our life together with comfortable and practical Birkenstock and Crocs shoes.

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Another factor is the growing fatigue from living in a big city because of the pandemic and the desire to be as close to nature as possible and to live a balanced life. This tendency has influenced not only our lifestyle but also our shopping habits: neo-romantic dresses, nostalgic bandanas, gardening shoes, and clogs became more popular. What can be more pastoral than the shoes of Dutch and Scandinavian farmers? You can dig in such shoes and go on a romantic walk in the forest.

What clothes we can wear with clogs.

There are no restrictions regarding ladies clog shoes. They will look relevant in almost any situation: we can combine them both with suits (as journalist Leandra Medin and fashion consultant Veronica Heilbrunner do) and evening dresses (and the proof of this is the latest Maria Grazia Curie collection for Dior). It’s worth taking inspiration from Hermes as well. Just look at how beautiful seemingly massive clogs look with laconic monochrome looks.