Manolo says, the Manolo has been quoted in the very amusing article about the Crocs in the Baltimore Sun.
In a world of fashion that has more than its share of don’ts — what exactly is it about a toy-like little shoe with holes that provokes such vitriol?
Is it the candy colors they come in? The plasticity? The cheapness? Is it the brazenness with which Crocs owners have introduced the former boat shoe into polite society, shuffling and shlumpfing around grocery stores, shopping malls — even offices.
“They repulse me,” says Vincenzo Ravina, who founded Ihatecrocs.com with his friend Kate Lesh, the happy snipper. “They are to your eyes what secondhand smoke is to your lungs.”
[…]
TV personality Bill Maher recently focused a diatribe against them that began, “New rule: Stop wearing plastic shoes.”
[…]
Manolo the ShoeBlogger puts Crocs in his “Gallery of Horrors.”
“The Croc-wearers walk about as if they have discovered something special in the unsightly combination of plastic clogs and foot sweat,” Manolo tells The Sun. He attributes their popularity to “the self-destructive cult of comfort.”
“Like sweatpants and mullets,” he says, “they appeal to that demographic which feels most comfortable only in their La-Z-Boys, buffalo wing in hand, or in the NASCAR aisles of their local Wal-Mart. In other words, the Crocs are 21st century peasant shoes … ugly, roomy, cheap and useful for standing knee-deep in pig manure.”
Maher seemed to agree with Manolo and Rudo of Cross Keys when he summed up the Crocs phenomenon as America’s “latest step in our neverending quest to dress as casually as possible.”
“You know I used to wear flip-flops, but they were a little dressy,” he deadpanned. “I want clothes I can hose down.”
Maybe Maher and Manolo are right, that what’s really upsetting the haters is the sense that Crocs are doing more than their part to chip away at our sense of decorum.
It is true. Crocs are not merely the comfortable shoe, they are also indicative of the general relaxing of traditional standards of decorum and respect. What is most troubling, however, is that so few peoples seem to understand this.
