What is it with men and trainers? Or rather, men of a certain age and trainers. I’m still trying to banish the horror-show image of Rishi Sunak wearing Adidas Sambas in No. 10 in an interview to promote his tax policies.
Has western civilisation really come to this? Are we destined to succumb to rubber-soled hell, or is there still a place left for those of us who prefer shoes that last decades, not a couple of years before being consigned to the dustbin of athleisure history?
For years I’ve played a game checking out men’s footwear on the London Underground. The proportion of trainers has risen exponentially, like grey squirrels stealing lebensraum from their indigenous red cousins, so that today you’re lucky if you even spot a leather-soled shoe. I’ve even noticed three septuagenarian friends – a peer of the realm, a tycoon and a retired general – sneaking in black sneakers beneath a Savile Row suit.
I’m conflicted, of course. Part of me says, to hell with what everyone else is wearing. Stick to your sumptuous, handmade, Goodyear-welted beauties. And then the other part looks at a pair of On Cloudvistas or Hoka Bondi 8s and lusts after that all-day comfort – cloudlike cushioned cosiness, for heaven’s sake – and whispers, give it to me, baby.
My shoe collection looks like a graveyard. I stare across the rows of wonderfully patinated, butter-soft leather boots, brogues and loafers by Henry Maxwell, Church’s, Crockett & Jones, Cheaney, Tricker’s and Alfred Sargent. An R.M. Williams or two for rugged, in-the-field manliness, here and there a more delicate Carmina or the surprisingly inexpensive Mocasines Pepe of Marbella (good enough for the king of Spain, good enough for me) for a whiff of Spanish estilo. Is that a pair of black tassel loafers over there, relegated to the ‘don’t wear, will never wear, what was I ever thinking, but can’t quite throw them out yet’ category?
But wait, what’s that? A pair of New Balance dad trainers, laddish Nike Air Force 1s and a feeble, misjudged attempt at the ‘smart black trainer’, the clumpy Camper Runner K21. I know. My wife was right.
I first dipped my toes, so to speak, in trainers years ago. That was because we had to. In the 1970s, trainers meant PE and PE meant running the gauntlet past a regularly rotating cast of prep school paedophiles. We all wore Dunlop Green Flashes, as first sported by Fred Perry half a century earlier. Looking back on it, they were crap. Later came Converse, another concession to American democratic wear, and although they always looked good, and still do, they were also crap. Wear them for a day and see how you feel. Later still came the obscenely comfortable Camper Pelotas in brown leather, but I’m not sure they were ever really trainers. I live in mine.
What’s a man to do? In my mid-fifties confusion over how to navigate this sartorial wasteland, I consult my guru Stephen Bayley (who confesses to having forecast the demise of the trainer back in 1992). ‘A hybrid sports-formal shoe, viz Prada, is now such a commonplace that establishments attempting to ban trainers in their dress code look like T-Rex seconds before the asteroid hit,’ he says. ‘But the only certain thing about taste is that it changes. So when the Prime Minister poses in Adidas Sambas, I am predicting the return of brogues and spats.’
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