SHOULD you see me proudly wearing them over the summer's next few balmy months, I'll thank you to call them by their proper name. So listen up, sucker, and listen good: these two leathery brown efforts presently adorning my lower pedal extremities are Redwood Crazy Horse Interlock-Apron
Z-Welt Dune-Sole Doc Martens.
That's what it says they are on the box they came in, so that's what they are, right?
They're the most happening part of what Doc Martens' stylists have called the DM Open Airwair range, don't you know. Cutting-edge fashion, these doofers, oh aye. Only the groovimost will
suffice for me, chummy.
Because I'm a dude, a flipster, a go-go Joe with sartorial savvy. I know the score. I've played the fashion footwear field. I've toyed with Cats and flirted with Timberland deck-shoes. Weighing the
difference between the Adibok
Airmix Jordanian cross-trainer and the One-Star Reebnik Converse-Pump Floppi-Tong' duvet-boot, I've found them both wanting.
And thus I keep coming back
to Docs: the no-nonsense kick-to-kill footwear favoured by every cool and streetwise youth cult of the past 30 years, from original skinheads to punks to mod-revivalists - pardon? What did you just say, pal? An outrageous slur!
No! Never! I am not wearing open-toed sandals! Yes, har-di-flipping-har, you are correct in noting that my toes are plainly visible through the interwoven
lattice-style uppers of my Redwood Crazy Horse Interlock-Apron Z-Welt Dune-Sole Docs, and so technically-speaking, a style-ignoramus such as yourself might label these Docs as sandals - what are you smirking about now? Hey, listen, no, honest, that cotton-type material covering my toes . . . trust me, those aren't socks, man.
Because if I were to be wearing sandals and socks - which I'm not, not really - that would mean I was sad, sensible, middle-aged, and very possibly a bearded, pipe-smoking, part-time Open Univer-sity lecturer in Social Anthropology as well. Not, of course, that there's anything innately wrong with any of these things. Much.
Actually, bub, your pitiful ploy of continuing to stand in front of me shouting: ''Sandals! Sandals! You're a wimp!'' merely shows that you have been unable to change with the times, persisting with your outmoded definition of sandals as shapeless brown things with holes in the uppers, fastened by buckles, that your mum made you wear as a kid. And while socks with sandals used to be bad ju-ju, now they're not.
Because I checked it out. Not that I'm feeling insecure about my shapeless, brown, buckled-up Redwood Crazy Horse Interlock-Apron Z-Welt Dune-Sole Docs, of course. But I did ask an expert. No, not my mum, smart-arse. One in swinging London - my pal who's been a metropolitan men's magazine fashion-guru and professional flouncer for 20 years,
so there. You'll have read him in all the top mags: HmFfmM, Aneamia, B&Q.
He was born Eric Heckmondwyke, but transformed himself into Enrico Mobile-Alabama. Actually, when I phoned him, I don't think he listened to a single word I said.
He was feeling proper pleased with himself because he'd accidentally visited a factory-reject outlet shop near Scarborough, usually frequented by coachloads of pensioners, where he'd picked up a pair of lurid leaf-green Farah slacks for #15, the same as his fash-mag slag-hag pals in The Smoke are pres-ently paying #80 for.
There's me on the phone saying: ''Sandals and socks: so unhip they're hip, or what?'' and on the other end there's Enrico babbling deliriously about how each crease-free pair of Farah slacks is machine-fashioned in 11 minutes flat entirely from petro-chemical by-products. ''Fashion-conscious folk in London are wearing granddad's brushed-nylon trousers?'' I said, aghast.
''Teamed with penny-collar poly-cotton Lord Anthony leisure shirts with epaulettes and little buttoned-down breast pockets . . . I got one in the same shop near Scarborough for eight quid,'' says Enrico. ''And get this - when I tried on le toute ensemble, the sales assistant, this old bag, she looks at me and she says: 'Are you buying those to go to a bad-taste fancy dress party in?' Bloody cheek. But I showed her.
''The bill came to #23, so I gave her #30 and told her to keep the change. She'll not be so saucy to any other members of the London fashion-cognoscenti when they drop by in future.'' I couldn't think what to say to Enrico. So let me just say this to you: a) he who wears wellingtons, a deerstalker, and Harris tweed underwear will never be in fashion, and therefore can never be wounded by going out of fashion, and b) rather you wear your clothes than your clothes wear you.
Finally, let me reiterate: I am not wearing sandals with socks. I am wearing Redwood Crazy Horse Interlock-Apron Z-Welt Dune-Sole Doc Martens, and I am conducting an experiment in the semiology of fashion.
P.S. Henceforward, I wish to be known as Dr Z Redwood Crazy Horse.
n Next week! Tune in for Dr Z Redwood Crazy Horse's lecture on the mating rituals of the Bonobo hill-tribes of Krazny-Dang, and afterwards join him in discovering the overwhelming lure of a pipeful of rough shag!
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