The Great Holiday Footwear Debate

Andrew’s Travel Footwear Tips

Like all well-travelled individuals I’ve developed the somewhat tedious habit of offering advice on all matters pertaining to holidays and travel – where best to visit, when to visit, what to eat when there – everything short of suggesting you tell them Andrew sent you, “they’ll know who you mean”. Nevertheless, all the advice I proffer now, and perhaps ever, is completely undermined, not by lack of firsthand knowledge or experience, but by the adornment of the most repulsive and inelegant footwear available in the entire western world – the sports sandal.

Now I wouldn’t regard myself particularly fashion-conscious, but like most people I’m happiest when I don’t look like a total dickhead (no comment - Travel Ed). So why did I finally succumb, after years of active protest, to the temptations of the sports sandal? Firstly, they have the advantage of allowing air to get in and around your toes and feet, which is advisable in hot climates. Secondly, and what clinched it for me, is their versatility: not only can you wear sports sandals on dry land, you can also wear them in the water; and unlike leather sandals, these graceless assemblages of plastic and rubber can cope with any dramatic environmental change.

The economy, alas, is a false one. Not only are my beloved sports sandals surrendering to a developed stage of entropy, salt water and sand replacing what once held them together, they also stink. Imagine four slices of Milano salami, a hand full of Kalamata olives and a couple of pickled gherkins sitting in a warm cupboard for a couple of weeks, just long enough for them to forget that they were once cured and preserved to withstand such a hostile environment, and then happening upon them one morning when you’re hung over and just about to risk the first snack of the day – et viola! Now imagine sitting across from me on a long, hot train journey with no air conditioning.

So what do I advise? What should one wear when holidaying in a hot climate? Flip-flops? Not on your fucking life! Have you ever walked behind someone wearing flip-flops? Did you too struggle to resist hobbling them Misery-style and then feeding them their own onomatopoeic footwear? Throughout southern Europe I studied these characters and tried to work out if it was their footwear or simply retardation that made them shuffle about so bloody slowly; and what is worse, some of these invalids refer to their flip-flops as thongs. Just imagine, you’re sharing a dorm in Nice with nine Australian men, all wearing thongs. Mention that in your postcard to mummy and daddy, I dare you.

Then there are Crocs. These are the plastic, colourful clogs you’ve seen loads of unfortunates cutting around in this summer. Out of all the summer footwear options these are the most morbid: they speak to me of morgues, murderers, and forensic evidence (think of tiled floors, garages with drains and Austrian cellars). If I were to have nightmares about aliens abducting me and probing me in intimate places they would all be wearing Crocs. But worse than any Croc adorned intimacy, both my parents own a pair.

Seeing as I started by undermining the advice I have to offer I guess no-one will be particularly arsed if I don’t give an alternative to the grotesquery currently available on the market. I’m tempted to return to the frightful sports sandal and suggest it’s the best of a bad lot. However, I did see one guy in Greece wearing a rather tasty pair of leather sandals and looking all the more cool for it. Which brings me to my concluding point: have you ever seen my feet? I have freakish finger-toes, each as hairy as an oxter and longer than your average arm. These toes look as though they could diligently play the keyboard for A Flock of Seagulls, hairstyle and all. They repulse me and surely every poor bastard who happened upon them in Europe this summer. I hope next years’ summer fashion will include brogues – please, for everyone’s sake.

 

The Fashion Ed's response:

Dear Poor, misguided Boy Traveller,

I realise that traipsing as much of the Inca trail as your easyJet minibreak will allow, would and should consume the lion's share of your attention whilst on vay-kay. Those GoogleMaps are not going to read themselves, after all.

However, is not a key facet of the travelling experience the imperative to keep your wits about you? Not falling for the hustlers that pray on hapless tourists, fleecing you for every cent you've got before you even notice they've gone? Swap the empty wallet in this metaphor for the gift of monstrous footwear and you'll catch my drift. Consider this your warning from the Home Office: being on holiday does not justify losing your shit and dropping good cash money on ridiculous accessories. Have a seat, a cool down and a Calippo, and listen in.

1) Your nightmares are justified. I am 99.9% sure that Crocs, along with espadrilles and full-shoe jelly sandals, are manufactured in Satan's workshop. That extra 0.1% is currently being tirelessly researched by Judy Finnigan and Gillian Tayleforth, but initial reports have been in the affirmative. In essence, wearing any of these at any time amounts to sartorial terrorism under any judicial system. So don't ask me to bail you out of the Bangkok Hilton now you've been warned, and if you're in for Crocs, I'll be asking them to amp up the water torture on my behalf (that's your folks done for).

2) Again with the percentages, consider your female counterparts. Spending 99% of the year having five-inch platforms recommended by the fashion mainstream as suitable everyday footwear trumps your two weeks with hot feet. Suck it up, boys - the female of the species is regularly forced to choose style over comfort, and this might be your cross to bear if you're interested in not looking like a douchebag. And if your current summer footwear consists of an open toe/strappy velcro combination, purchased from an 'outdoors' shop, trust me: douchebag. You have two very simple options. If your toes aren't too Bilbo Baggins, you're in luck - you win cool feet in surfy flip flops or leather Jesus sandals (not too Jesus, mind - think New Testament, New Balance). Flip flops may slow you down a bit, but compared to how slow and special you look in those Crocs, it's worth getting used to walking with a click-clack.

If, however, your toes are just too Middle Earth to unleash on the general public, you're sweating it out in trainers with no socks. My personal pick? Converse Chucks or spanking new white K-Swiss. Roasted, are we? Blisters? Again, suck it up, homes, you'll get no sympathy here. Until you're hard enough to roll barefoot with the Balinese street urchins, you need to make some choices. And frankly, if you're willing to risk footwear more befitting of a fifty-something chemistry teacher on a rambling trip to CentreParcs, rather than the hip, cool, Pacific Island-hopping twenty-something you are, then you're going to have to up your sticks and pitch your tent elsewhere. We'll have no purely functional footwear on my watch, thank you very much.