For you: harmless, please!
You often see them on the feet of middle-aged women: sneakers that are based on what young people are wearing at the moment, but which miss the current zeitgeist by a hair’s breadth – which is why they always look like they were bought in the medical supply store, despite the best efforts . Just mom sneakers. Comfortable shoes for people who love to cook Sunday roasts or host Sunday night talk shows, like Anne Will. For years, New Balance was such a sneaker label for moms and dads. The taste police also ignored the brand for political reasons, because the owner had donated a six-figure sum to Trump and a neo-Nazi blogger had branded New Balance the “official brand of the Trump revolution”. Fortunately, the modern attention span is approaching that of a goldfish! Because now the 990 and 574 models are going through the roof, even on overly cool feet like those of Timothée Chalamet and Zoe Kravitz they have made it. Behind this is a mixture of general Nike weariness and a good marketing strategy: collaborations with brands like Aimé Leon Dore or Miu Miu are the solid ground on which insecure hipster souls stand. Here we see the 57/40 model – so unexciting in shape, material and color that it’s good again. You don’t have to fight sneaker collectors in so-called “raffles” (online raffles for the right to buy a product). You just walk into a store and say: a pair of sneakers, please! Uncool really is the new cool.
For him: The Kukident chic
The horseshoe theory also exists in fashion, it works like this: A product or a brand that is decidedly unfashionable, extremely untrendy or simply ugly suddenly moves close to super hype, precisely because of its extreme attributes. The same is true of the French healthy shoe brand Mephisto, whose flagship product dates back to the 1970s and also looks like it. A chestnut-colored leisure shoe with a thick sole that immediately makes you think of vigorous walking in the Westerwald or at least of grandpa in the guest room. It’s funny that this self-colored shoe has the product name “Rainbow”. Even more uplifting is that the urbanists are currently embracing it with their thin hipster sleeves. In any case, several young streetwear labels (e.g. Patta and Oi Polloi) have recently presented cooperations with the old shoe brand from the Vosges, where the aim was always to put the original “Rainbow” in a new light. In fact, it has to be said that, compared to the rest of the extensive range of “modern” low shoes at Mephisto, this model is the only one whose design has a genuine character and which somehow comes across as endearingly quirky. The inner values are of course impeccable anyway: comfortable footbed, special sole that is easy on the joints, robust design. You can say: No trend shoe has ever been so close to a health insurance benefit! In this sense, there’s still hope, for example for the German brand counterpart Salamander. Or for the Westerwald.