Season after season it is not rare to spot a specific garment or accessory being replicated on different runways: at times it may be a coat with a peculiar silhouette, a pair of shoes or a bag maybe. In different colours and materials, that design then starts trending, becoming really popular and desirable.
The item for the next season is a pair of thick-soled heavy-duty and safety Wellington boots. So far they have appeared on multiple runways: for example, Demna Gvasalia combined Crocs with safety Wellington boots or stilettos for Balenciaga's Spring 2022 collection.
The latter mainly features Crocs-cum-boots in grass green, dark dove gray and black. In the last few seasons Crocs have scarely mutated like Coronavirus, generating new and more frightening variants, going from comfy footwear ideal for long lockdown months to abattoir boots and hybrid stilettos (definitely the scariest mutation so far, View this photo).
Bottega Veneta also opted for black and green, shamrock, royal blue and egg yolk yellow rubber boots for its Pre-Fall 2021 collection. The fashion house added a supposedly elegant twist with a gold glitter version of the boot. In this case the abattoir-meets-nuclear plant look gets injected with a healthy and much needed dose of circus glamour.
Bottega Veneta also dared pushing things further with a clutch that looks like the result of a terrible accident at the boot making factory occurred when two boots just melted together and somebody from the fashion house had an eureka moment thinking this was clever, super surreal and painfully cool/hip (unfortunately it's not, it still looks like the result of a terrible accident at the boot factory...).
Proenza Schouler's Resort 2022 collection also features heavy tread boots in black or white. Now, before wondering why everybody seems to have jumped on the heavy duty Wellington boot bandwagon, stop and think: we have seen a lot of these boots on reportages about Coronavirus with health workers in full PPE or with people in protective suits spraying cities to control COVID-19. Probably these images turned into an inspiration for some designers.
Maybe for this reason some of us may find these boots a little bit offensive like those Vêtements' DHL shirts sold at $330 and worn by people who have never worked as couriers. These boots evoke indeed the attire of workers in the fish and meat processing and packaging industries, in nuclear plants or in the sanitation industry.
So, what to do with this trend? Well, you may just succumb, get the luxury designs and look trendy, or simply cheat, and invest in proper heavy duty Wellington boots like the safety polyurethane one by Dunlop, usually sold at a fraction of the price, and try and make them look cool.
In both cases, remember, you can still reuse both the luxury or the original safety boots should you decide to go and work in a slaughterhouse or a nuclear plant (but, if you're lucky enough, they may even win you a role as an extra in a nuclear disaster/pandemic/dystopic film).
Being lightweight, thermo-insulating and with tremendous wear-and-tear resistance, maybe originaly safety boots would be a better choice as they would probably be more durable than the trendy ones. Yes, they may not look terribly cool, but longevity is guaranteed and, who knows, they may turn useful should you opt for an adventurous career change.
Comments