Flip-flops have remained one of the most reviled men’s-wear items. Tom Ford regularly inveighs against them, and fashion magazines make special mention of their ghastliness. But in Orange County, where I’m from, flip-flops function in a way that’s only suggested elsewhere: They complete a tableau of carefree, sand-speckled revelry — an endless, almost utopian vision of joblessness and idle bliss. Even the PacSun and Hollister ads, set in an idealized Orange County, are too charged with a manufactured spring-break debauchery to accurately capture the mellow SoCal lassitude. In the O.C., flip-flops were flimsy foot skis meant to help people reach a secluded surf spot — for hopping in cars or treading lightly atop sand dunes.
Wearers bore them with pride as the sandals bent and warped — like a well-patinaed Barbour jacket or distressed pair of Levi’s 501s — indicating a life well lived. Southern Californians would proudly display their decades-old Rainbow sandals, worn into Paleolithic grooves. There were other, more short-term options: Reefs or Roxys cut in thin black slices of foam for ambling through dingy malls; glossy rubber Havaianas for cruising slightly nicer malls.
Flip-flops were the norm at my SoCal college. On particularly sunny days, campus looked like one giant longboard. When I left for graduate school in New York City, I packed my Havaianas. My mental image of the metropolitan flip-flopper was something vaguely from the early-2000s SamRon-and-Lindsay Lohan era — a certain off-the-rack, louche, bohemian look. Lines from Rufus Wainwright’s song “Poses” came to mind: “Now I’m drunk and wearing flip-flops on Fifth Avenue/Once you’ve fallen from classical virtue/Won’t have a soul for to wake up and hold you.”
Yet, especially once my graduate courses started, I realized I had made a grievous sartorial error. Well-manicured but broke humanities Ph.D. students, often opting for thrifted Issey Miyake or Comme des Garçons, underwent a mini-glitch when viewing my footwear. Even quasi-crust punk philosophy grad students, favoring the urban camouflage of distressed workwear and soiled white tees, seemed to regard them with skepticism. The unwritten rule, I learned, was that the inevitable splash and slime of the city, distributed unpredictably across one’s garments, was fine, to be expected. Having one’s unprotected toes a millimeter from the sidewalk: not so much. In flip-flops, the Southern Californian in New York feels like a waylaid patron of Club Med washed up in a world of impossibly chic, black-clad cosmopolitans.
There are few things more inviolate than a New Yorker in flip-flops. The scrunchie mentioned in a crucial miscalculation by a “Sex and the City” character; a fanny pack or vacuum-sealed dri-fit polo on a wandering tourist; maybe a Rangers jersey. These all pale in comparison to the unbridled disgust one receives from one’s toe cleavage being exposed in haute company.
Eventually, I acquiesced. I tossed out the Havaianas and opted for the sobriety of the loafer or the boat shoe. These were appropriate, dignified choices, I gathered, for going about one’s business during the stifling humidity of New York summers.
Then, after a winter vacation to Miami, I had an instructive relapse. Anticipating a bit of extended poolside sitting, I snatched up some neon-palm flip-flops from the dollar store. After hitting the street, I recalled what was so entrancing about flip-flops. The dull, hypnotic thwack lulled me. I slowed my gait; my feet clung to feeble rubber and were prohibited from moving with too much momentum. I was forced to meander — regarding a Louis Vuitton-print Squirtle in a gallery window here, an Alex Israel installation of a dancing avocado there — and take in sights like a sunburned flâneur. I came to realize flip-flops are the principal vacation footwear not only because they provide ventilation but also for the state of mind they induce: a lax, leisurely dreaminess.
When I returned to New York and slipped them on to run a casual errand, I felt the residual glow of past serenity. Each flop functioned as a tiny shot of positivity — a psychosomatic shiver of relaxation and ease. My loping stride forced me to follow in the footsteps of my own sedate memories, willing them into the present.
The pad and “thong” (yikes) obstruct productivity, but in a positive way. Someone wearing flip-flops in Manhattan is rescued from a certain frenzied pace of accomplishment — one is forced to chill, and embrace a voyeuristic detachment. I find it rare to encounter couples screaming at one another on a street corner while wearing flip-flops; stickups in flip-flops are also uncommon, save for the occasional beach noir. The flip-flopper stands temporarily outside the daily, social Darwinian struggle — a walker in a world that is less encumbered, less fraught, less material.
Still, the traditional complaints persist: the filth of the city, the peril of obstacles and booby traps on the sidewalk, the discomfort, the crunch of a potentially misplaced Doc Marten. Implicitly, one is disregarded as an infringing yokel or a confused European, subtly shunted from the driving thrum of the city’s industry.
And yet I value being taken out of the mix. Perhaps if everyone in the city was forced to wear flip-flops, there would be greater delicacy, calm and consideration. That may justify a momentary fall from aesthetic virtue.
