How plimsolls are outgrowing their fashion fad status

It’s a well accepted fact that fashion trends can come and go in a matter of months, between which is sandwiched the decline from ‘edgy and in’ to a star appearance on Trinny and Susannah’s fashion disaster show, where said outfit is diagnosed as a symptom of depression, a midlife crises, or loneliness (but never, funnily enough, someone who’s just stopped giving a shit about clothes). Cue an emotional catharsis and a brand new wardrobe- problem solved! Anyway, the point is fashion trends come and go, quickly. I’m pretty sure we all thought B*witched had all but massacred the double denim look before its revival this year dragged it out of the step mum’s wardrobe and into the mainstream.

But among these fashion cameos occasionally comes something that hangs on that little bit longer, going beyond a mere trend and becoming overtime a staple in the clothing norm. (I should say here that I’m not talking about fleeces, anoraks or “sensible walking shoes”, all of which have been a mainstream clothing item for some time, but only ever trendy to the over 60s and trainspotters). And more often than not these items are the ones that are at once both faintly ridiculous, but just sort of make sense.

A case in point is the skinny jeans. Ridiculous? Certainly; jeans so tight they make the wearer’s kneecaps visible from twenty meters away is no strong selling point. And yet, since their renaissance 3 or 4 years ago, they show no sign of disappearing. Every shop on the high street will stock a pair, giving them a new-found stability next to denim heavyweights such as the Boot Cut, the Straight Fit, and the blue-pair-of-jeans-that-don’t-have-a-fit-or-cut-or-whatever-because-I-just-want-a-blue-pair-of-jeans-that-fit fit. The reason for this is that somehow, skinny jeans just work. Their skimming on material is an economic model that simply can’t fail, and if you’ve got legs so skinny you look malnourished, you’re really just making the best out of a bad situation.

But if skinny jeans were the last item of clothing to scrape its way into the mainstream and stay there, the next entrant must surely be the plimsoll. If you’re not convinced that wearing shoes previously seen on the feet of 6 year old kids in a PE lesson is ridiculous, there are more reasons still. Firstly, wearing canvas shoes in a country that rains every other day, and then the day inbetween that, isn’t a prime example of forward thinking. Any appearance of mud, grass or just about anything that isn’t a clean pavement is the footwear equivalent of falling through a hedge backwards, and to top it off the adolescent plimsoll wearer gets through more in a year than throughout their entire primary school career, despite the very probable absence of gym classes and annual sports days. And yet the plimsoll too, since its reappearance a few years ago, is now the footwear of choice among pretty much the entire fashion conscious population, long outstaying flash in the pan status. Why? Well, maybe because a lot of people have just got fed up with paying £65 for a trainer that cost 10p to make and doesn’t do a much better job, just for a label that no one’s going to look at anyway. Which just sort of makes sense.