Kanye West slider confirms men’s “shoe dysphoria”
30/08/2018
He said that men in particular are now in a state of “shoe dysphoria”, or of profound emotional and psychological dissatisfaction regarding footwear choices. What appears to have tipped the dapper Mr Armstrong over the edge is that musician and fashion designer Kanye West attended a wedding in Florida this summer dressed in stylish suit from Louis Vuitton paired with sliders from his own collection (he has been working with adidas on shoe collections since 2013).
Sliders, Robert Armstrong commented, are emblematic of how badly at sea most men are when it comes to footwear. He said: “As in all matters of masculine attire, we once lived in simpler times. There was a spectrum of formality for shoes. At the top were plain Oxfords, closely followed by brogues, wingtips, then Derbies, then loafers.”
He mentioned work boots and trainers as the styles at the bottom of this spectrum, and said there were a few “intermedite” styles, including chukka boots and boat shoes. He also said black pushed shoes up the spectrum, while brown pushed them down (he mentioned no other colour) and suggested that grain leather also pushes footwear up while suede would push them down. So far, so simple.
But then he said: “Today, all types of shoes have been crammed into a chaotic middle ground, where poor judgement blossoms.” He bemoaned men wearing black athletic shoes to work believing, mistakenly in his view, that the colour makes them look “like real shoes”. He then said middle-aged men wearing athletic shoes with suits in “a sad attempt to look young or hip” was more likely to be “an expression of repressed self-hatred” and added that the currently popular styles of low-cut, rubber-soled, lace-up sneakers with uppers in shiny leather are, if anything, even worse. “The idea seems to be to go one step up from trainers, while projecting relaxation,” he wrote. “The result is men who look like very well-to-do 10-year-olds.”
Mr Armstrong said he does not think shoe dysphoria can be reversed. “The obsession with sartorial democritisation is not going away,” he concluded. “The rules that have disappeared are not going to be replaced. Tha may be a good thing, on balance, but it means we are all going to make our own choices and most of us, like Kanye, are going to choose badly.”
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