Review: The Futures Archive ‘The Shoe’ (S1/E10)
When we think about who makes a shoe, who do we think of? The manufacturer? The designer? Perhaps the factory worker? Rarely do we think about the wearer as the maker of a shoe, not in a physical sense but in terms of its social and cultural meanings. In a recent podcast by the Design Observer about ‘the shoe’ and human-centred design, presenter Lee Moreau commented on the ‘symbiotic relationship’ between the designer and the wearer or user of objects like shoes. While the designer might have in mind the sort of person who might wear that shoe, the reality can often be a very different situation.
In the podcast, this symbiotic relationship was exemplified by the Clarks Originals styles, the Desert Boot in particular. As a Jamaican man living half his life in the U.S., co-presenter Garnette Cadogan, the Tunney Lee distinguished lecturer of Urbanism at MIT and author of Walking While Black, spoke evocatively about the relationship between Clarks shoes and their Jamaican wearers, something I have explored in my own research and is also the focus of a book by Al fingers. Garnette explained:
‘if you're in New York and you want to know the Jamaican neighborhood, don't go searching for the Jamaican food or searching for Jamaican music or listening for Jamaican accents, walk into neighborhoods and keep your head to the ground, and when you start seeing a high frequency of Clarks shoes, it's very likely you're at a Jamaican neighborhood.’
The Jamaican Love of Clarks is something that has happened organically over time, evolving from the appropriation of the UK brand by a disaffected Jamaican youth or ‘Rude Boy’ following Jamaican independence in 1962. The Jamaican Diaspora and their Dancehall music - within which Clarks feature regularly - helped to ensure the shoes’ counter-cultural status, adopted by subcultures around the world from the UK, France and Italy to the U.S. and Japan. Although unknown by many, the identity of the Desert Boot and its associated Wallabee and Desert Trek styles as a ‘Jamaican shoe’ has become an important way in which many wearers are able to identify themselves, identify with others and connect with their culture. As Garnette explained:
‘I think of Clarks on my foot as a kind of nod. A kind of nod with the feet, when I pass other people with Clarks, particularly being away from Jamaica. Half of my life I've spent living in the U.S., and so it's a way of at once being elsewhere while being here, a way of holding on to home, as it were. And so to walk… sometimes walking can be a minefield, depending on the neighborhood I'm in, in which people are assuming that I'm up to no good because of my skin color, but to wear Clarks is sometimes a way of asserting my identity in the midst of… sometimes when I feel that I have to make sartorial adjustments just to appear non-criminal to others. And the Clarks are a way of saying I still have on the rude boy shoes. You don't know it's a rude boy shoes, but I know it's a rude boy shoes. And it's still a kind of rebellion, even though you can't see the rebellion. You know? But my own silent rebellion that gets me a sense of a mischievous satisfaction.’
The notion that shoes are used as a way to identify oneself and identify with others has been a strong theme emerging through my own research and the If the Shoe Fits Project, yet it was the comments Garnette made from his perspective as a black man wandering the streets of Boston or New York that I found particularly impactful. He recalled his first purchase of Converse All Stars as an attempt to say ‘Look, you know, I am the safe, all-American black man walking through your neighborhood. No need to call the cops.’ In this way, he described shoes as not only a connection with others but also a form of protection, not from the elements but from harassment and the police. He acknowledged that while all clothes are to an extent costumes, enabling us to play a part, in some circumstances they move from being a costume to an armour.
At the outset of the podcast the presenter described a symbiotic relationship between the designer and the wearer, but here also emerges a symbiotic relationship between the wearer and the shoe. Through wear, in social and cultural contexts the two make one another, each enabling the other to exist. And this intimate relationship is so powerful it outlasts the life of the wearer. When shoe historian Elizabeth Semmelhack mentioned a pair of ancient Egyptian funerary shoes, intended to be available to the dead in the afterlife, Garnette revealed that Jamaicans are also often buried in their Clarks shoes. Indeed the shoes are so venerated that when they are no longer wearable they themselves are also often ritually buried.
For many, shoes are considered a luxury and their study… frivolous. But the experiences shared in this podcast highlight to me the often critical importance shoes play in processes of being and becoming, something the Footwear Research Network hopes to continue exploring and sharing. If you are interested in becoming part of this work please click here to find out how you can get involved.
Thanks to Design Observer, presenter Lee Moreau and associate producer Adina Karp of the Futures Archive podcast for including me in this valuable discussion. Thanks also to co-presenter Garnette Cadogan and fellow contributors Elizabeth Semmelhack and Kevin Bethune for sharing such thought-provoking insights.
