Sole Searching

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Somewhere along the way, trainers became an "appreciating asset," heels became optional, and a boating shoe designed to be hosed down after gutting a fish became a six-billion-pound company with a queue outside it. This week I go sole searching (sorry) through three decades of British footwear, from the door policy at a nightclub called Envy to a very unscientific twenty-minute stakeout outside a coffee shop, to work out what we actually lost when we swapped heels for comfort — and what on earth Crocs are trying to prove.

Trainers as investment vehicles. The death of the going-out top. And the truth about individuality when fourteen women in a row are all wearing the exact same "unique" shoe.

Rate, review, subscribe — and tell a friend who's currently defrosting a pair of trainers out of tissue paper.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Am I out of touch? Is the world weird or is it just me? Welcome back to Am I Out of Touch? I'm Alison and today we're doing something I never thought I'd do on this show, talking at length about footwear. This episode is called Soul Searching, and I promise it's not really about shoes, it just starts there.

3 Rants Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Number one, how the trainer went from that thing you wear to the gym you don't go to to actual appreciating asset. Number two, what we lost and why we're honestly well rid when the heels and the door policy went. And number three, whatever happened to individuality, and while we're at it, crocs, because nothing has tested my faith in free will quite like a foam clog with drainage holes.

The Great Trainer Uprising

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Let's start with the crime scene. Somewhere in the last five years, nobody can agree exactly when. It's like trying to pin down when you stop fancying your first boyfriend, it just sort of happened. The trainer completed its transformation from gym avoidance wear into a full-blown investment vehicle. Women I know, grown women, women with pensions, talk about trainers now the way my gran talked about her Emma Bridgewater mugs. And before anyone accuses me of exaggerating for the bit, trainers overtook heels in this country shops years ago, and women in their late 30s and 40s, not teenagers, women with a pension and a slow cooker, were the ones leading that particular stampede from very start. This was never a fad, it was a full change of government. I got the cream ones before they restocked, a friend told me at brunch recently, with the hushed reverence usually reserved for scanned photos. They're basically an appreciating asset. An appreciating asset. It's a suede trainer with a gum soul. It was invented for handball players in Germany in 1949, played by men who I promise you were not thinking about resale value. But no, now we've got grown women setting phone alarms for 9am, online drop, refreshing a website with the focus of someone diffusing a bomb, all to buy a trainer that already existed 40 years ago on the feet of somebody's auntie who wore it to do the school run and thought absolutely nothing of it. And this isn't just my brunch table being unhinged. Women now make up something like a third of the people collecting and reselling trainers, up from roughly a fifth less than a decade ago. And women are the fastest growing slice of that entire resale economy. We didn't just join the trainer culture, we annexed it, quietly, the way you take over the good armchair. And it's not just chunky trainers with MIDI skirts, though God knows that combination has now been declared by unanimous internet vote an entire personality. It's the accessorising of it. The little ankle socks bought specifically to peep over the top correctly. The 15 quid shoe cleaning kit with its own tiny brush, like the trainer is a grade two listed building requiring specialist restoration. We took the shoe your mum wore to Tesco's and turned it into a hobby with equipment. There are now entire apps whose sole purpose sorry, soul, I'm keeping that one in, photographing your trainer to confirm it isn't a fake. A level of due diligence humanity has never once applied to a marriage, let alone a shoe designed for men kicking a ball around on frozen mud. I'm not saying trainers are bad. I'm wearing a pair right now. My feet have never been happier, my bunions have written a thank you card. I'm saying we've collectively decided that comfort needed a price tag, steep enough to make it feel like we hadn't actually just chosen comfort. We couldn't just admit these are nicer than heels, we had to make it a market. Line in the sand. I'll wear the trainers, I've already bought the trainers, but I refuse to call a shoe an appreciating asset with a straight face for one more day of my life.

A Brief and Bitter History of the Heel

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Which brings me to Envy Nightclub and the golden age of dressing for the door policy. There was a time, and I have the blisters to prove it, historically on my actual feet, some of them permanent, when getting into a nightclub required roughly the same preparation as a small military operation. Hair straightened until it had no personality left of its own, a going-out top always capitalised in my head, always from a shop that no longer existed, always requiring a specific strapless bra purchased solely for that top and never worn again. Heels, real heels, the kind with an actual heel, because trainers, trainers were the great unmentionables, the thing that got you the slow, disappointed head shake from the bouncer built like a filing cabinet, as if you turned up to a christening in your pyjamas. This wasn't about fashion, not really. It was a ritual, and I want to be fair to it. The getting ready part, for us in the one bathroom, someone's straighteners, someone else's good perfume being passed round like contraband, a bottle of wine that cost $4.99 and tasted like a personality disorder. That bit was generally one of the nicest parts of being 22. The heels were just the entry fee for the ritual. The night itself and your feet paid the actual price. And I'll be honest, some of that ritual isn't a choice anymore, so much as a memory, because the venues themselves are vanishing. We're losing a nightclub in this country roughly every two days, more than a third of them gone since 2020. Entire towns left without a single one. So some of this nostalgia isn't optional, it's closer to a memorial service. Was any of it good for us? Absolutely not. I once did the entirety of the Macarena badly at a Hindu in hills that had actually drawn blood by 11pm, and I remember it as one of the greatest nights of my twenties, which tells you everything you need to know about how reliable nostalgia is as a witness. Nostalgia is that friend who swears the ex was actually lovely, really, technically not lying, just conveniently forgetting the specifics. Right now, nostalgia is telling me that MV Nightclub and its door policy represented some lost golden age of glamour, so let's just go with it. Blisters and all. Not even for the good perfume passed round like contraband. The blisters can stay exactly where I left them in 2004.

What Ever Happened To Individuality

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Whatever happened to individuality and why do crocs exist? Here's the bit that really gets me though. The retro trainer boom is being sold to us relentlessly, every advert, every caption under a very carefully candid photo, as an act of individuality. Express yourself. This is so you, stand out. Except I stood outside a coffee shop for 20 minutes with a notepad, which I appreciate is not exactly a peer review methodology, but bear with me. Nineteen women walk past, 14 pairs of the exact same individual trainer, different colours if you want to get technical, a sage green one here, a clay there, because apparently we can't just say beige anymore, but the same shoe, the same silhouette, the same deeply personal, unique to me trainer that every third woman on the high street was also wearing to express her unrepeatable individuality. We haven't actually rejected the uniform, we've just swapped it for a newer one and given it a better origin story because I bought what everyone else bought feels worse than I bought the reissue of the 1970s German handball trainer. It's really about the heritage. At least the Dor Policy Envy Nightclub was honest about being a uniform. It never once pretended the going out top was a bold act of self-expression. It knew it was a costume. We all knew it. That's the sort of fun of it. Whereas the trainer economy has pulled off the genuinely impressive trick of selling us mass conformity and calling it rebellion at three times the price with a little authenticity card in the box, like it's the Turin Shroud. A friend of mine who owns a pair she has never worn once outside. They live in the box, in the tissue paper. She takes them out, photographs them on the same cream chair, and then puts them away. We've reinvented the good china, except instead of a wedding justifying it, the special occasion is a slow Tuesday and decent light.

Why Do Crocs Exist?

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Now crocs. I want to tread carefully here because the second you say a word against them, someone's nan, someone's toddler, and someone who has spent 12 hours on their feet in AE last night are going to write in, and fair enough, they've earned the right to wear a plastic colander on each foot if it gets them home. Here's the bit that gets me though. They were invented in 2002 in Colorado as a boating shoe, a resin clog with actual drainage holes called ports, so the water your foot inevitably ends up in has somewhere to go. It was designed to be hosed down after gutting a fish. That's the entire brief. And somehow, 20 odd years later, that shoe is a six billion pound company. There's a post-malone one with fake cigarette butts moulded onto it. Actual fake cigarette butts as a design choice. And there's a cue, an actual cue, for the privilege of buying a boating shoe that started life being hosed down next to a bucket of mackerel. And of course, nothing in this economy is allowed to just be comfortable. There's the personalization, the little charms, gibbets they're called. I didn't choose that name, I'm just the messenger. Sold in packs of 10 for a fiver. You can press a little plastic strawberry, a tiny union jack, and inexplicably a single dice into the holes on your shoe and call it self-expression. We did the exact same trick with the trainers 20 minutes ago in this episode. Same move, different foam. Look how unique I am. Using a shoe 40 million other people also bought, decorated with a charm 40 million other people also bought. At least the trainer economy had the decency to pretend it was about heritage. Nobody's pretending the crocs are about heritage. Nobody's standing in a coffee shop queue whispering about the storied legacy of the 2002 boating clog. We've just collectively agreed the ugliness is the point now, which is either the most honest thing fashion has done in a decade or proof we've completely stopped caring about what anyone thinks. Possibly both. And that's really the heart of it, I think. Not the individuality bit going wrong, the caring bit going right. Somewhere between the appreciating asset trainer and the cue for an ugly boating shoe, we stopped performing tastes for other people and just started wearing the thing that stops your feet hurting. That's not a failure of individuality. That might honestly be the first proper individual decision most of us have made about our feet since we were seven and refused to wear the shoes with laces. Line in the sand. You can put 40 plastic strawberries on a foam clog and call it main character energy. I'm calling it what it is. Comfortable, ugly, and completely gloriously unbothered. And honestly, good for it. Right, the verdicts. Trainers laced, blisters retired, as promised. Trainers, verdict. Not really an investment, mostly nostalgia with a receipt, and I've made my peace with it. Heels and the door policy. Verdict. Blistering, expensive, mildly exclusionary, and increasingly a memory since we're losing nightclubs in this country roughly every two days. Individuality and crocs. We never actually escaped the uniform, we just gave it a foam sole and a packet of plastic strawberries. But somewhere in there we also stopped performing for each other, and that bit's worth keeping. If you've made it this far, rate, review and subscribe. Tell a friend who's currently defrosting a pair of trainers out of tissue paper. And if any of you still have the blisters from Envy Nightclub, I see you. We earned those the hard way. Turns out the trainers were the answers the whole time. That's soul searching. Go outside, wear something comfortable, and if it's got holes in for drainage, I've generally got no more notes left to give. If you have enjoyed today's episode, let me know at www.speakpipe.com am I out of touch, where you can leave me a voice message. If you want to top up on rants, subscribe for just three dollars a month and get some more bonus features. Till next time.