What better way to assert your independence than by dressing exactly like everyone else? All Stars are a PR dream: despite being owned by a faceless multinational corporation (Nike) who can afford to spend millions on product placement, they still remain inexplicably popular with indie kids the world over. The wearer thinks of themselves as an individual: this, not to put too fine a point on it, is bollocks. The wearer is not anti-fashion: they simply don't know where to start. All Stars are to your average wannabe what court shoes are to your average secretary - comfortable, safe, and totally undemanding. They need no polishing or care, don't have to be broken in, will not incite hoots of derision from the gum-chewing classes, and generally need no wearer input at all. When understanding the Converse wearer, the condition of the shoes is imperative. If the rubber is shiny and clean - or worse, intentionally damaged - the shoes probably came between the Ramones Greatest Hits CD and studded belt in the Punk Rock Starter Pack.
Unlike most fashions, the skate shoe has no apparent historical predecessor, having seemingly appeared from nowhere at some point in the 1990s and defying all odds to have grown in popularity year on year. When worn, they roll around on the end of the leg with apparent unpredictability, and are inclined to fall off when subjected to any sudden movements; their styling a postmodern interpretation of Liberace's famous mantra, 'Too Much Of A Good Thing Is Wonderful'. This apparent shortage of either form or function finds its only equivalent in such arcane items as the top hat or toupee - to understand why they are so persistantly worn, one must look into the adolescent psyche rather than aesthetic sensibility. In youth, every generation seeks to slough off the rememenants of the generation previous to it. In the 1950s, it was rock'n'roll: in the 1960s, drugs and protest: in the 1970s, punk rock, and so on. But after 50-odd years of youth uprisings, children of the 1990s have run out of ways to shock: for five decades, their predecessors have been Sticking It To The Man in every conceivable way, and it has gradually become clear that no amount of civil disobedience will ever change the world, especially when carried out by those too young to vote. The only way to rebel against formerly anarchistic parents, surely, is not to rebel at all - eat at McDonalds, shop at Topshop, go to college and get a job. Blind consumerism and acceptence of the status quo are probably the only things teenagers haven't done over the years; the natural climax of this is the handing over of ridiculously large sums of money in a mock-independent shoe shop for something that makes ones legs look short.
Hi-tech trainers are the sartorian equivalent of the sports car, constantly being updated and revised in a bid to tease a few more consumers into parting with their money in an already saturated market. The shoes are usually found squeezed between the hem of a pair of designer jeans and the battered face of some bloke who looked at the wearer's girlfriend the wrong way. From a purely structuralistic point of view, there is an interesting contrast between the smooth lines and wipe-clean plastic of which the trainers are constructed, and the leisure pursuits for which the shoes are usually worn. There can surely be few ironies greater than your mugger escaping on such a potent symbol of purity as clean white trainers - white clothing having also been traditionally the preserve of the idle rich.
Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, author of the seminal fashion tome Elegance (think What Not To Wear, but with class), observed that 'sandals should not be worn in the city'. She said that long before the flip-slop became ubiquitous, but watching people trip happily past my window, filthy-footed and club-toed from trying to hold onto their shoes against all odds, I think she could well have predicted a trend. There is nothing inherently wrong in the flip-flop - as long as it is worn with care. 'With care', in this case, usually means at the beach. And with the unpredictability of the British summer, nobody should tempt fate by going out so tantalisingly close to barefoot. Flip-flops are worn for the suggestions of bohemia they carry with them. They are so easily kicked off on reaching a suitable patch of grass: the wearer thinks of themselves as a free spirit, at one with nature in their pink polyvinyl slip-ons, ready at any point to rip off their shoes and jump into a fountain, or other such wild-and-kerayzee antics. This could well be something to do with the fact they are so beloved of 20-something office girls who are clearly not free in any sense of the word.
I'm entirely aware that to group together all high heels is rather like grouping together all blue-eyed people, but they still need a few paragraphs in honour of their significance. Heels are admired rather than worn, usually: most women keep a pair or two in the back of the wardrobe for special occasions, but resort time and time again to nice practical flats for wearing around the house. Like throwing out your last slogan t-shirt and beginning to automatically sit with your knees together, a girl's first pair of high shoes are regarded as a rite of passage. Any heel over two inches throws the body automatically throws the body into what anthropologist refer to as the 'courtship strut' - arse out, tits forward, all bodily language saying Hello Boys. It is this, not the irrepairable damage to the unformed pelvis, that makes so many people shocked by the sight of young girls in stacked heels. When analysing high shoes, the most crucial factor, above style or colour or any other influence, is the height:width ratio of the heel. Height shows ambition, and width confidence. Girls in tall, fat heels want all the benifits of adulthood with none of the responsibility, wanting to seem sophisticated but still needing the reassurance provided by such trifles as balance: cigarette-thin stilettos, on the other hand, show a person who is entirey at ease with the contents of their wardrobe, if not always themselves. The recent fad for 'ground-down' spike heels, almost flat but tapering into a tiny point, is demonstrative of a wearer who is so precociously self-posessed she doesn't care that her shoes look ridiculous.