In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion recounts a sartorial gaffe of this stripe. And when, one summer night on the subway platform in New York City, a street musician took one look at my dusty toes and began to improvise a song with the refrain “Lovely Girl With Dirty Feet,” I vowed to save the flip-flops for the beach. A friend gave them up after an audacious rat scuttled over her exposed foot. Finally, with barely an inch between the wearer’s feet and filthy city or suburban streets, flip-flops can be a health hazard. As for flip-flops, the sandal’s plastic cousin, these are office-appropriate only if your co-workers don’t mind that you sound like a metronome as you walk. A pedicure is, as Daphne Merkin wrote in Elle, “a necessary luxury.” Wearing stockings with them is like putting on underwear over your pants. With regard to women in open-toed shoes, a few simple rules are sufficient. And leave your socks at home, particularly if they are the same dark ones you wear to the office-a place, by the way, where sandals should never be worn. But if you are a man who chooses to wear sandals, be aware that the person staring at the ground may actually be glaring at your feet. It might be best to avoid the sandal trap altogether and choose an inoffensive pair of sneakers. ( Hey ladies, I’m a sensitive, sandal-loving man who writes lyrics and grows his own herbs.) The lone permissible type is the soccer sandal its athletic associations render it properly masculine and its David Beckham affiliation elevates it to sexy. It’s also that sandals seem vaguely European and effete- the girly man is an archetype American culture has yet to embrace-and that sandals, when worn by men who are anything but effeminate, convey an air of affectation. It’s not just that we are sexist in our dislike of hairy unpedicured toes and pasty feet. Few styles garner more vitriol, in conversation and in print, than sandals for men, sometimes called man sandals, or “mandals.” The animosity has multifarious roots. It’s a great look, especially for the slight of frame.” The hint is hardly subtle.įor both sexes, but especially for men, the dog days of summer present the conundrum of summer footwear. In Vogue’s April “ Shape Issue ,” a photo spread featuring 90-pound gazelles lounging in shorts reads: “As the days grow longer, trouser lengths get shorter. These items are either the size of table napkins-like the $200 crocheted pair in Elle, which could double as underpants-or long, skinny columns designed for the 12 living women with pipe-cleaner thighs. In the July issue of Lucky, editor-in-chief Kim France writes, “Before this year’s flat-fronts … have you ever seen shorts in Lucky?” (The very dated pleated-fronts, if you own them, should remain a skeleton in your closet.) And both Vogue and Elle have recently displayed shorts in their pages. Recently, however, tastemakers have declared that the ultimate summer faux pas is once again cool. They are the C-list celebrity of summer fashion, maligned yet ubiquitous. But for most of their history, shorts have remained a signifier of serious joggers, unstylish suburbanites, and conspicuous Americans abroad. As Kennedy Fraser wrote in The New Yorker in 1971: “horts … have their element of fantasy, since the woman who wears them must not mind looking like a child of ten.”Īt the time of Fraser’s essay, shorts (then “hot pants”) were enjoying a rare fashionable moment. Denial may explain the adult woman’s penchant for adolescent fashions, like last year’s flounced cheerleading skirts and other girlish costumes: maritime-inspired attire that evokes Shirley Temple’s sailor suits shirts tied in the front à la the guileless Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island and, most infantile of all, the miniature “short shorts,” which at their smallest often measure a mere five inches from waist to hem. And to acknowledge that miniskirts and halter tops don’t hang like they used to is to admit the passage of time. Body consciousness and strapless bras are not readily incorporated into a lexicon formed during years when bare feet and Kool-Aid wings were the ne plus ultra of chic. But it may be that for many women, summer is synonymous with childhood. It might seem that such errors stem from either a perverse exhibitionism or a stubborn refusal to buy tasteful underwear.
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