The most pressing fashion question of 2020 is probably, “Will we keep wearing face masks as a fashion accessory after all this is over?” Maybe, sure, probably not forever, I don’t care. I have a much more important question:
Crocs, huh?
The pandemic has killed shoe sales across all categories, but Crocs has seen a revenue increase — 14% in ecommerce sales and 27% wholesale. They’ve long been a popular choice for people who work on their feet, including healthcare professionals and the restaurant industry, but that’s not the whole story.
Making it work, staying true to your roots, and finding a path out of the 2000s
They’re not cute. Everyone says so. They’re “the garden gnome of fashion,” according to branding expert Rachel Weingarten. In 2007, during the first Crocs boom, Slate dubbed them “a Tinkertoy on steroids.” The writer, Meghan O’Rourke, compared them to UGGs, an aughties trend footwear that I covet to this day: Both signaled authenticity and rebellion against corporate norms of good taste, she said.
Crocs are a bottom-up brand, embraced by ordinary Americans everywhere. It is a democratic purchase. It looks painful to wear—like something you might find in the rock-bottom bins at Kmart—but is actually soft and high-tech, defeating class-based assumptions.
After the 2008 recession, Crocs went out of style and the company clung to life, dialing back its expansion. It may have looked like the company was cruising on autopilot, the shoes hanging out on store shelves like a friend invited to the party as an afterthought, but underwater, the duck’s feet were paddling. Outsourcing, resource reallocation, even a cash infusion from Blackstone Group — it worked.
Ten years later, Crocs were in the perfect position for a comeback. Fashion of the late 2010s was all about three things: nostalgia, recognizable brands, and conspicuous comfort. Crocs hit three bullseyes.
Wearing Crocs also makes a statement. In the early, early years, a Crocs-wearer might be signaling their grounded, crunchy-granola lifestyle, but the rise of high-fashion Crocs collabs indicates that Crocs’ practicality isn’t a big part of their the popular perception. It’s about the fact that they were ubiquitous and stupid as hell when we were kids.
When influencers are struggling to make a splash in an over-saturated attention market, it’s easy to use a recognizable fashion item of yesteryear to pander to a jaded audience that’s embracing ugly over basic. It’s the irony principle behind normcore and dadcore, a through-line from that 2007 taste rebellion, evidence of culture being shaped by the masses rather than trickling down. It would almost be a punk statement if it wasn’t so enthusiastically commodified.
Starting in 2016, Crocs cashed in, collaborating with the likes of Balenciaga and Christopher Kane as well as influencers like Post Malone. Highsnobiety called the shoe “one of 2018's most unlikely trends.” It was the heyday of couture elevating mass-market.
But, sorry to break it to you, that was years ago. Who even remembers 2018 anymore? Highsnobiety predicted continuing success for Crocs, and their sales figures have apparently seen that through. Should we be looking forward to Crocs as the It Shoe of the 2020s, finally breaking through the ethylene-vinyl acetate ceiling?
I’m gonna say no.
Tomorrow never comes
It’s hard to think about the future right now, when we’re all just living one day at a time, but imagining what’s going to happen when this is all over has gotten me through the last couple of months. I’m talking about life two years from now, a brave new world of substantial immunity.
Reading trend predictions from January and February is pretty hilarious now, even if they might have accidentally got some things right. (Sure, psychedelics could easily see a resurgence in the next few years, with people trying to escape this plane of reality.) The phrase “we are living in unprecedented times” has been repeated to the point that the words have lost all meaning, but when it comes to fashion trends, the causes and effects of these unprecedented times might not be that unfamiliar.
Consider history. During and immediately after each of the World Wars, western fashion spasmed. Global crisis had recalibrated priorities, resources were scarce, and mass tragedy made it hard to stay on-trend, which limited the range of fashion choices and made previous styles impractical or irrelevant — but the 1910s also saw wild, expressive hat designs, just on a smaller scale than before. During the Great Depression, fashion retreated from the extravagance and avant-garde trends of the 1920s, taking cues from the simple elegance of past eras. A reaction against the moral lapses of the Jazz Age, or a response to economic hardship? Probably a little bit of both. At the same time, the ‘30s also saw the normalization of more casual wear in everyday life.
What does that tell us about today? Well, by 2022, the fashion world will probably be split. I predict two major tributaries: over-the-top and understated.
In December, it was fun to joke about bringing back the Roaring Twenties, but now it seems like the comparison is more apt than we could have guessed. Some people, especially young people, are already on the verge of going apeshit. Even before it’s safe (I’ve seen the Snapchat stories), those people are going to go all-in on partying and revenge-shopping. If most offices continue encouraging work-from-home, young professionals will probably invest more in going-out clothes than blazers and button-downs.
While there will be a lot of peacocking, it probably won’t manifest in Effie Trinket chic. Just like the flappers of the 1920s popularized simplified, less formal styles, all this time spent in loungewear will probably encourage comfier club ‘fits, especially if you’re trying to make up for lost time and don’t want to spend your night trying to put a bodysuit back together in a bathroom stall. The rapid-fire trend cycle isn’t likely to end, for the same reason — making up for lost time.
Then there’s the other side of the coin. People who are seriously affected by the pandemic — financially, emotionally, or in other ways — are likely to take a more spartan fashion path. That doesn’t mean that the styles themselves will be austere, though.
Like Depression-era families who stuck to their penny-pinching habits past the 1930s, this group will choose to invest in basics. Also like people living through the Great Depression, this group will probably take their cues from the past. I’d guess that the ‘90s will be back in a big way — as facilitators of self-expression die off (start-ups, brick-and-mortar stores), we’ll probably trend toward the grunge/DIY side of that decade. We’ll also probably see a continuing interest in displaying your values through fashion statements, and this consumer constituency might be the force that kills the parts of the fashion industry that refuse to evolve.
Meanwhile, the Crocs company’s star is going to fade out of the fashion heavens. People will be looking to the future, not the past, and it won’t be as cute to show off your ironic sensibilities with a cheap, ugly shoe. We might see a resurgence of fondly remembered trends as people try to recapture a pre-pandemic joie de vivre, but Crocs won’t be one of them. As Meghan O’Rourke wrote in 2007, “The very thing that has made them such a huge hit, after all—their ugly duckling distinctiveness—is also likely to make it hard for the company to go mainstream in any enduring sense.”
Crocs will survive the pandemic, same as it ever was. The shoe may have been emblematic of the fashion industry’s shift to a more grounded, inclusive attitude about popular style — as well as the influence of internet irony culture on the mainstream — but Crocs’ greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. As a fashion item, Crocs are too recognizable, too singular, still dining out on 2007.
How do you feel about Crocs?
Here’s a link to a silly little survey I made about Crocs. If more than, like, eight people respond to it, I’ll probably write a follow-up post comparing my Crocs predictions with the general mood about Crocs. Prove me wrong.
Header collage images from the British Library and Wikimedia Commons and by Austin Chan on Unsplash.