Are Crocs cool? Why we love ugly fashion

Crocs have been around for more than two decades, and they're more popular than ever. The unconventional footwear company expects to make more than $500 million in sales this year alone.

Is the pandemic really the reason why more people are embracing footwear that's more about function than fashion? Culture writer Scaachi Koul joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to unpack why ugly fashion is having a moment.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Scaachi: I would say the Croc is a quintessential human product. It is needlessly ugly. It is determined to be as comfortable as possible, even through ways that don't even necessarily feel important or valuable. It's very bright. It allows for the human race to customize them. People love to take ownership over the thing that they own. Good for hurling, can be submerged or floated. I think it's a very human object. That doesn't mean I like it.

Elamin: But here's the thing: Crocs are not supposed to be fashionable. They're supposed to be functional, right? Healthcare workers love them because they're comfortable. You can wear them for hours. They're easy to clean. You can just put them in a washing machine, which as a parent, I really appreciate that. I like the fact that your kid can just flip them on and then you're out the door. Should we be giving them a little more respect? Those are nice qualities in a shoe.

Scaachi: No, they're not. The first thing is that you kind of have to separate your children needing this shoe, and you, an adult, wearing a plastic PVC shoe…. That is a different configuration than an adult wearing it, or even a healthcare worker. That's like a superhero needing to wear a cape. God bless. You don't see me walking around with a cape. I can't fly!

I think the reality is that everything we buy has a fashionable portion of it. Just because you don't buy something thinking that it's necessarily a gorgeous piece of art does not mean you're not making an aesthetic choice. People who are buying Crocs are buying them now because they look like Crocs. That's part of the choice.

Elamin: But that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, a constantly fashionable person, as you can imagine. I get it, the pandemic got a lot of us dressing more casually. But why are we turning actively to ugly stuff?

Scaachi: I mean, that's always been true. I think people have always turned to stuff that's kind of intentionally ugly.... I think part of that is because you're kind of saying something when you wear something ugly. You're like, "I'm so good looking and I can figure this out. I'm so smart that I can wear the ugliest thing in the world." So much of high fashion is rooted in that. Look at what Kim Kardashian is selling me — tan, sparkly underwear? And I'm still thinking about it. That's really the problem.

Elamin: But I'm trying to be conscious of the fact that there are my aesthetic tastes, and then there are the aesthetic tastes of millions of people. And sometimes you go: the masses, how wrong can they really be?

Scaachi: Oh, they can be super wrong. Have you heard about the masses, Elamin? The masses love to be wrong.

Elamin: But what's wild is that you can't be cross-generationally wrong. The thing about Crocs is that Gen Alpha love to wear them, boomers love to wear them…. I have some humility, and the humility is to look at all these people and go, "Maybe I'm the one who's wrong, if they're so into this?"

Scaachi: I think people are into it because of the fact that it doesn't look good. I think it's baked into the design. And I think one of the smartest things that Crocs did was to allow room for wild customization. Those stupid little jibbitz that people are putting in the shoe, that is how their business has been scalable. Because one of those ugly shoes survives, like, several wars. You're not going to buy that many of them…. But those little things allow you to make it your shoe, and that is such a huge part of the business model. It's not necessarily that different than Kate Spade when they started to let you monogram the little attachments on your purses. The difference is one is a pebbled leather bag that you can wear in public without being stoned, and the other one tells you that maybe you need to go to the hospital. I don't know.

Elamin: I'm glad you brought up the jibbitz. Crocs doesn't do a lot of advertising, but they do drops, and drops are what high fashion houses do. They go, "Every once in a while we're going to drop a season," and the season is usually some kind of collaboration season. Crocs just did a collab with McDonald's. You can get Grimace Crocs. But also, they've collaborated with Balenciaga. So the idea that Crocs are this low-fashion shoe, that's how they've been able to disrupt that — with those jibbitz. Does that idea work for you? Do you go, "I want to customize my shoe and make it more high end"?

Scaachi: No. Again, I don't want to wear a shoe that looks like I took a duck's bill and put it on my foot. My issue fundamentally is that I think it's an ugly shoe. It goes with nothing. But if you're into that, then this is also a great way for you to touch a designer, right? Because it might be the only way for you to get to it. You can't afford a $1,500 bag as a huge investment, but you can buy these little things. And then also you can further attach yourself to different brands. So if you are, for example, a Grimace sun and a Hamburglar rising, then you can have these things that indicate to the world that you like these things.

Elamin: "Grimace sun, Hamburglar rising" is truly the way to wreck my day. Listen, the CEO of Crocs Andrew Rees said, "We don't mind some consumers hating the brand. The bifurcated nature of the brand, the ability for some people to hate it and some people to love it is just super important." He's talking about us, Scaachi. Not only is he OK with the brand being despised, that's a brand strategy — to be hated by certain people. How do you feel about that?

Scaachi: Ambivalence is better than indifference, always, for anything. If you're trying to sell anything and you have people indifferent about your product, then what's the point? But if you have 50 per cent of people who really love it, and then the other 50 per cent think that it is a travesty that humans will have to account for later, that textbooks will be written about this failure of judgment — then that means that 50 per cent of the people who really like it are going to buy it. So that's way better than, "Oh, whatever. It doesn't really make me feel anything." That's why we love ugly things. They make us feel something. And you know what, Elamin? I love feeling aggrieved, and I feel aggrieved today.

Elamin: Thank you for bringing your sense of grievance about Crocs. I've really loved this conversation. Scaachi, thank you so much for being here.

Scaachi: Thanks, Elamin. You're my best friend.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Scaachi Koul produced by Nikky Manfredi.