During the noughties an Aussie fashion trend hit the world but didn’t last too long. But now it’s back — and we can blame Covid, Kerry Parnell writes.
Forget Halloween, prepare to be terrified by the news that Ugg boots are back in fashion.
Not that they ever went away in Australia, of course – unlike the rest of the fickle fashion world, they’ve been a feature of Down Under kitchen couture and lounge room luxe for decades, which is as it should be for the nation’s wonder-slippers.
But in the noughties, the unthinkable happened and people took their Uggs from sofa to shops and bedroom to bar, declaring their slippers were really shoes.
This was a lie.
Thankfully, like all trends, it disappeared eventually, people once more began wearing shoes to go about their outdoor business and for a while, the world made sense again.
But just as the haunting memories of mucky shearling finally faded, the pandemic has brought them back.
Now the nightmare of the noughties has officially been revived by trendsetters including Kendall Jenner and Kaia Gerber and like the return of The Walking Dead, we can again expect to see scores of people puddle-shuffling to the shops with pronated feet.
I suppose it’s the least surprising thing to emerge from lockdown — once you put those fluffy foot-warmers on, it takes a willpower of steel to swap them for something with more sole, but less heart. But this we must do, footwear friends, unless the very fabric of society collapses, like our arches.
I don’t care how you dress them up, Ugg boots and all their generic iterations — yes Peter Alexander Home Boots that includes you — are slippers and as such, must be confined to home.
It is a crime to wear them outside and if it was up to me, I’d put some kind of tracking device on them that sets off an alarm if you cross your threshold.
Like everything that makes a comeback, this time around, they are slightly different.
Where once stylistas such as Sienna Miller and Kate Moss wore knee-high Uggs over super-low-cut jeans — even, gasp, Kate Middleton was snapped palumphing along the pavement in a pair before she became a duchess — now it’s all about short boots teamed with althleisure-wear or baggy jeans.
The newest styles are low-cut Ultra Minis and the Tasman, a sort of shoe-boot with braiding that looks like it’s been pimped by Oaken from Frozen in “Big Summer Blowout” style.
Like other “ugly shoe” collaborations, such as Balenciaga and Crocs, or Proenza Schouler and Birkenstocks, Telfar recently brought out limited edition logo Uggs for $332. This is “one of the best things to happen to fashion” says Vogue.
Or, for around $1000, you can get serious about your slippers with Miu Miu and Isabel Marant versions, or a Gucci logo-covered pair.
Sadly, I fear it is too late to hold back this pernicious plush pandemic. The only spark of hope is that it is weaker in summer and very few cases are expected in Australia over the coming months.
There are also some learnings we can take from the Uggademic of 20 years ago – in that, other than Britney Spears, not many people attempted to team Ugg boots with shorts on 30C, for obvious podiatric hygiene reasons.
That, at least, isn’t expected to hit us one more time.
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