There is a popular trend on TikTok wherein young women will upload outfit videos captioned with something like: “When people don’t get you’re wearing flip-flops in a minimalist luxury fashion kind of way and not in a lazy don’t own real shoes kind of way”, and, “When you wear your little black flip-flops in a Mary-Kate Olsen, Sex and the City, casual-chic way and not a dorm shower, lazy girl way.”
Kendall Jenner in Los Angeles.
The rubber sandal has an unfortunate reputation among white-bread fashion fans. Isn’t that what people wear to take the bins out? Or to avoid picking up a verruca in public showers? But here’s the thing: there is no summer look more successful for a metropolitan woman than wearing jeans and a pair of flip flops in urban centres. It evokes freedom – a flip-flop is not so much a shoe as it is the absence of restriction – and it is a casual signalling that says, “I’m not overly concerned with looking polished and perfect and fashionable.”
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Sienna Miller in London, 2008. Jack
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Jennifer Aniston in New York in 1998. Sam Levi
Take, for example, Zoë Kravitz, who earlier this week wore some £630 flip flops from The Row with a ribbed vest and wide-legged jeans. Or Kendall Jenner, who was yesterday afternoon photographed in a cropped tee, straight-leg denim and £860 leather thong sandals – also from The Row – while strolling through Los Angeles. I’d imagine they wore those shoes not in a “university halls when the fire alarm goes off” kind of way, but in a “1990s sun-kissed Jennifer Aniston, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy” way.
