Summer is coming to an end, and so it’s a good time to return to a serial exploration of some summer clothing habits that help define the era, including through symbolic ramifications, ecological consequences and political stakes. Second stop in the series “The Furies of Summer”: the clog.
In Egypt, they say chip-chip. In the United States, flip-flop. In Cameroon, swatter. In Spain it is chancleta. In Portugal, chinelo. In reference to the spacing of the toes, the Italians have forged infradito (literally: between the fingers); the Germans, Zehentrenner (toe separator). The Japanese use zori for centuries and centuries.
In France, we speak of tong, borrowed from thongwhich means “strap” in English. The 21e The flip-flop throwing world championship was held on Sunday in Gironde…
Here, we generally prefer gougoune, delicious to say and hear, like all words in “oune”. In Ste-Germaine Campsitethe Cowboys Fringants sing: “Here we’re sunbathing / In flip-flops and belly-stompers / Listening to Elvis / On a tape to cassettes / With the Laurentide tablet! ». Tokébakicitte…
In short, the variety of more or less controlled names to designate beach sandals shows to what extent this strappy sole has spread throughout the world. Earthlings buy about 20 billion shoes per year, and these bare feet have become the universal pair, by far the most popular, well ahead of sneakers, whose collector’s versions are worth a fortune.
Normal. The hyper-affordable flip-flops allow the poor of the Earth to wear shoes, so to speak, as needed and as desired. The industry produces them in masses everywhere, up to two million copies per day for a single Brazilian factory. There are also artisanal versions recycling certain materials, including used tires, with tutorials to support them.
“In our countries, flip-flops symbolize relaxation and carelessness,” notes a recent text published on The Conversation. “They rub shoulders with beach towels and accompany aperitifs with friends. In summer, we see them everywhere on feet. Behind a shopping cart and in town, as well as at the swimming pool and at the campsite. Even on the pedals of a bicycle – at the risk of getting grazed – and driving a car – behavior punishable by a fine.”
Why, how
They are also seen at cocktail parties and even at galas. The sandal popularized in the post-war period made its first foray onto the catwalks and chic evenings in the 1990s. Fashion designers have revived the trend in the presentations of their spring 2024 collections.
” The Return of the Flip-Flop “, headlined in June The Business of Fashiona leading industry website. “It’s a flip-flop summer,” added a few days ago Wonderland Magazine citing the importance of the accessory at the Olympics. Chanel, Madewell and Staud have featured sandals of varying price points with their dresses, jeans and shorts. Saint-Laurent is offering Laszlo flip-flops for over $1,000. The Row is doubling the price of its leather and suede Ginza.
“The flip-flop is making a strong comeback this summer: it is once again becoming a statement “of style,” summarizes Madeleine Goubau, lecturer at the UQAM School of Fashion. She defended her doctoral thesis in communication on clothing diplomacy at the end of July.
“Elevating something ugly, made of rubber, to a higher level of style is a trend that we’ve seen develop over the last 10 or 15 years. When big designers adopt a style element, like Crocs or Birkenstocks, we expect them to be a force in our wardrobes. We’ve already been through the flip-flop-Crocs-Birkenstock cycle — and now I think we’re back to flip-flops…”
The opposite explanation, so to speak from the bottom up, from the base to the top, also holds. Brands and big fashion houses do not have a monopoly on trends that are increasingly relayed on social networks.
“Inspirations come to us from all sides,” says M.me Goubau. “We can see elements propelled by young people and influencers, and then these elements are recovered by designers. Now, a slightly ugly and cheap accessory can become very cool if athletes and stars decide to do so. There is a chic in shaking up conventions. A kind of “I don’t care” chic is developing.”
With what effects?
The environmental consequences of these choices don’t seem to wiggle too many toes either. Whatever its name, the chinelo–chip-chip–Zehentrenner has a definite impact on the degradation of the planet, from its manufacture by the petrochemical industry to the pollution of land and seas by used shoes. There are an estimated 50 to 70 trillion pieces of microplastic in the oceans, and the catastrophe is constantly growing.
“I have no doubt that flip-flops are an environmental disaster. The material degrades slowly,” the specialist comments. “The object is cheap: you can buy a lot of them and throw away a lot.”
That said, Madeleine Goubau warns against the temptation to reduce the sector’s ills to a certain type of clothing or material. Polyester T-shirts also pollute. “It’s our whole unbridled consumption of fashion that is problematic,” she says. “We definitely shouldn’t let someone stop buying flip-flops can exonerate itself from all the rest of its consumption that causes harm. The flip-flop is a good image of the many ills of fashion and our society, but it is not by eliminating them that we will solve the problem that is so, so vast…