The funkiest footwear in town is the preposterous brothel creeper
Travel budgets being what they are in these straitened times, I wasn’t able to make the menswear fashion shows for SS11 (that’s spring/summer 2011, for those who don’t speak catwalk), which is a pity. Anyone who did will have witnessed a thrilling sight – the return of the brothel creeper.
Not every retro trend pleases me but this one does. I’ve always loved brothel creepers, you see. Partly it’s because I owned a pair in my teens. Partly it’s because The Clash wore them. But mostly it’s because they are so utterly preposterous in both name and design.
Of course designers being designers, they can’t just bring back the old rockabilly-style creepers with the buckle and the leopard-skin uppers. Instead, they have to “reimagine” and “reboot” (or, in this case, “reshoe”).
Pick of the new bunch is the Prada version. They cost an eye-watering £510 and resemble a tap shoe balanced on a Weetabix. “Is it a bird, is it a plane … is it even a shoe?” asks GQ style editor Ben Reardon in this month’s edition of the magazine. And well he might.
“In fact,” he continues, “it’s a brogue/espadrille/brothel creeper hybrid and even though you may feel as if you’re dragging a dead weight around – and you will walk like Frankenstein – place a pair upon your feet and you’ll be guaranteed to stand tall in the office.”
You’ll have to take his word on that.
Hard on Prada’s heels (sorry) are shoemakers Oliver Spencer, Cesare Paciotti and Grenson. Those last two employ a white Vibram sole, rather than the more traditional crepe ones used by Northampton shoemaker George Cox, the godfather of the brothel creeper.
Vintage Cox creepers cost a small fortune on eBay but the company has teamed up with online fashion retailer oki-ni for a special SS11 range. They’re calling them Chukka boots, in a nod to the shoe’s pre-teddy boy origins (something to do with the Desert Rats, apparently).
I’m not sure I’ll return to the land of the brothel creeper, despite my fondness for the shoe. I might have looked like Joe Strummer once, but these days I’d be more like the fat one from Showaddywaddy. But I’m glad they’re back. At the very least, I can admire them from a distance – or, as is more likely given nobody has £510 to spend on shoes, through a shop window.
Article source: http://www.heraldscotland.com/life-style/fashion-beauty-wellbeing/male-order-retro-shoes-1.1087696
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Tags: Ladies Shoes Fashion
