SOLE PURPOSE
There’s one pocket of the fashion industry – no matter what Hedi Slimane’s skeletal models at his recent Celine show might suggest – where putting on weight is roundly applauded; your feet. The trend for tricky, challenging, downright strange trainers that sit somewhere between orthopaedic contraption and high-fashion attire has bubbled away for a while now, but this autumn it seems Dolly Parton’s mantra of “the higher the hair, the closer to God” is applied to footwear; the higher and more bulky, swollen and chunky the trainer, the closer to footwear nirvana.
This fervour for all things supersized is credited to the Balenciaga Triple S, launched last year and created by the house’s wunderkind designer Demna Gvasalia. It is a trainer of enormous proportions with huge moulded soles and deliberately distressed details. Swiftly termed the “dad trainer” for its aesthetic proximity to a geography field trip piece of footwear your father might have worn in the Seventies, it is deliberately “ugly” and it sells out in hours, despite the £700 price tag, every time it drops in Selfridges or on Matchesfashion. com.
And the trend shows no sign of abating; every fashion house worth its millennial credentials, from Versace to Fendi to the normally austere Alexander Mcqueen, is producing trainers in oversized proportions with moulded details and highfalutin styling. Some have even applied this gargantuan sole to more formal iterations such as Berluti’s version, which melds the formal upper part of a leather derby shoe with a massive, chunky sole.
Is this something that should be on the average man’s radar? Having test-driven (walked?) a pair of this ilk, what’s remarkable is the lightness of the sole, despite the gargantuan proportions; and the extra inches provide some oomph without looking like you’re wearing some kind of Tom Cruise-style platforms.
Chunky, high-octane trainers can also look dynamic with a casual suit, adding a hint of the unexpected; we’re talking everyday, easy tailoring here – the sort you wear with a polo shirt if you work in a creative industry, not a pinstripe ensemble working at a Magic Circle law firm. If the full effect is too much, perhaps an easier entry point is to adopt a more sedate trainer with a thick rubber sole. While we’d never discount a proper, substantial shoe – particularly in the autumn months – bold trainers are as much a linchpin of a man’s wardrobe in this athleisurewear-heavy world as a shirt or jeans.
Whether yours gravitate you several inches off the ground and require their own postcode is entirely up to you.
Shoes are morphing into strange forms, but is bigger always better, asks Stephen Doig