How men are muscling in on girls’ favourite footwear
However, we do live in a society where shopping has replaced religion, so I guess it’s about want, not need. Ugg seem to think so and have trained their marketing guns our way. But we shouldn’t want to wear them either. And it’s not that they’re unattractive. No, there are plenty of other good reasons to hate Uggs.
Let’s start by examining the male Uggerati. Leo DiCaprio had chosen to team his new ugg boots classic miniwith a purple jogging suit; he stands as a warning to us all.
Ronnie Wood, 61, is pushing the ‘old enough to know better’ envelope that already includes so much of the rest of his life to encompass his feet.
With football players, well, how many sex scandals, brawls and other acts of sundry chaviness do you have to read about to realise that if a footballer is doing something, you probably shouldn’t be. As for Brad Pitt, he seems like a nice guy, so I’m going to assume he was poorly advised.
Hollywood stars Ben Affleck (left) and Bruce Willis have both been spotted wearing ugg boots kids
Next, I’d like to play the xenophobia card. When you think of style, where do you imagine? Paris? Milan? Rome? The nice bits of London? Or perhaps you think of the frumpy parts of America and Australia, which are where Uggs come from. Why would you take your fashion cues from there?
Then there is the question of how the boy-girl clothing dynamic works. Think about it. She tries on a pair of his boxers – too big, but kind of sweet. He puts on her knickers – hairy sex pest.
To be fair, Uggs are probably towards the more acceptable end of this spectrum. But that’s because they don’t look particularly good on most women either.
In fact, the only thing Uggs do have going for them is that they are comfortable. But if comfort was the only criteria for selecting our clothes, we’d all be sporting the trailer tracksuit look.
There are plenty of good reasons to choose elegant shoes rather than Ugg boots. But fashion is sufficiently vacuous that a thousand good reasons are often outweighed by the fact that Brad Pitt is wearing them. So are the feet of male Britain about to turn Uggly?
Perhaps, but I believe that most of us will escape this fate. The reason for this is the favour that the amorphous boot finds among footballers.
You see, when a fashion movement has its genesis among the likes of George Clooney and Clive Owen, one can reasonably assume it’ll trickle down through the social hierarchy.
But when a style trend has footballers among its founder members, it usually leapfrogs the middle classes and is embraced by the chavetariat before dying a lingering, painful death in the aisles of Primark.
But in six months time, perhaps you can look forward to being mugged (or Ugged) by a gang of soft boot-wearing hoodies. At least the kicking won’t hurt too much.
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