The Ascent of Flip-flops

From the bathroom to the fashion runway and beyond

My mother became an unwitting trendsetter in the cosseted world of India by flaunting flip-flops in public in the 70s, long before they were rebranded as fashion icons. She’d stubbornly wear them to garden parties, and even to the local Gymkhana club for Sunday Brunch, where she was predictably admonished and asked to return in more appropriate footgear. Much to my horror, she even showed up in them once to a PTA meeting at my school.

In those flip-flop hating days, such cheap rubber-soled slippers—commonly known as Hawaiian chappals—were seen as icky and gross, like dirty underwear, by the middle and upper classes. You wore them to the shower or toilet, or maybe while weeding the garden, but never—my goodness—anywhere else. It was only the lower classes who wore those despicable rubber slats in public. But then, they didn’t have a choice, did they? We, who had a choice, relegated them to the dark recesses of our abodes, storing them under the toilet sink or in the broom closet.

Would we do the same today with the supercool Chipkos flip-flops that are hand-painted by a famous Los Angeles artist, adorned with hand-painted gold, and sell for almost $20,000?

The 70s, however, were dark times for flip-flops, especially in the Subcontinent. Japan, which began producing these cheap slides in the 1930s as modern versions of zori, their traditional slippers, was an early pioneer. It was then popularised in Australia by servicemen returning from World War II, where they were called ‘Jandals’, slang for Japanese sandals. American World War veterans also brought back zori as souvenirs, and found that they made convenient slippers. Their no-frills, almost elegant design, and thick rubber soles, appealed to the American love of convenience and simplicity. Flip-flops, which owe their name to the sound they make when you walk in them, began to be mass produced in the United States in the 1960s. Brightly patterned versions were quickly associated with the free-surfing lifestyle of California, and became de rigueur footwear for the pool or beach in the swinging 60s.

Yet, flip-flops didn’t become part of the fashion landscape till the 1990s, when trendsetting supermodels like Kate Moss began flaunting them on the red carpet. The ubiquitous slippers started showing up at the Cannes Film Festival and catwalk shows of designer John Paul Gaultier, who’s always been attuned to micro shifts in fashion. Slippers studded with Swarovski Crystals began selling for $150 a pair as the ubiquitous sandals moved over into the mainstream, from the fringes of beachwear.

The rise of flip-flops in that decade had much to do with the casual zeitgeist of the era, and the shiftover from the corporate 80s to the entrepreneurial 90s. With the internet boom and subsequent elevation of jean-and-T-shirt-wearing CEOs to billionaire status, suits and Hush Puppies lost their aura of success. Instead, sweatshirts and sneakers began to invade office spaces, as dressing down became the embodiment of a new culture of innovation and individuality. With icons like Steve Jobs, Sergei Brin and Jeff Bezos grabbing the headlines, the humble flipflops— like baseball caps with Che Guevera cutouts—became a coded fashion statement.

Like blue jeans before them, flip-flops also had the added cache of being associated with the working class, that reservoir of fashion trends for America’s middle and upper classes. Blue jeans migrated from cowboys to gold miners in the California of the 1850s. Finally, they were taken up by factory workers during World War II, and entered the fashion mainstream after James Dean made them cool in Rebel Without a Cause.

The majority of rubber slippers sold in the States were $3 Havaianas, Brazilian flip-flops that are the footwear of Sao Paolo’s peasants, dockworkers and other working class people. It was this association with the Brazilian labouring classes that gave the sandals their final stamp of authenticity. While there has been no groundbreaking film that heralded flipflop ‘cool’, a defining moment for the footwear came in 2008, when Northwestern University’s champion women’s lacrosse team wore flip-flops for their meeting with President Bush at the White House. That incident generated quite a lot of criticism, with the women publicly berated for their poor choice of footwear. While the women later decided to auction their flip-flops off to charity, a message had been sent to the fashion masses: Flip-flops are now ‘in’.

After the White House flip-floppery of 2008, the footwear is now well established in American fashion consciousness. Girls wear open slippers with long skirts to summer parties, using them to show off their gorgeous pedicured feet. More than one fashion blogger and magazine has remarked on how ‘open feet in summer’ can be so decidedly sexy. Though some Americans still look down on men showing off their toenails, that hasn’t stopped undergrad males and internet hipsters from showing up with hairy feet in flip-flops. You see them these days on everyone, from accountants on casual Fridays to style mavens in Central Park.

As the footwear has gone mainstream, so has its range available for sale in the United States. While most are still the $5–10 variety sold at Wal-Mart and discount stores everywhere, they are also Gucci, Prada and Calvin Klein versions that sell for $50 or more. The innovative PêcheBlu company has sold over 2 million sports flips. At over $50 a pair, their outer shells are ribbed and hard, to get better grip and prevent injuries, while the inside is softer, has arch support and claims the cushioning of a sports shoe. They are recommended for gym workouts and long walks, and have become quite the rage among a particular urban segment. Meanwhile, there are also Swarovski crystal-studded flip-flops, and even more high-end variants that are hand-painted by famous artists (like the Chipkos mentioned earlier that sell for $20,000). The Chipkos, by the way, were inspired by India’s humble Kolhapuris, according to the company’s founder, Priya Jaggia, who says that it all started on a trip to India.

Let’s face it, flip-flops in America are the ‘sneakers’ of the new millennium. There’s no better proof of this phenomenon than President Obama making a fashion statement by wearing flip-flops in Hawaii earlier this year. “No President before has shown his toes in public. It makes him look like a man of the people,” remarked Presidential historian Doug Wead. Clearly, America has come a long way since teenagers horrified Mrs Carter in the 70s by wearing sneakers to the White House. What’s the next step— flip-flops in outer space? It’ll happen sooner than any of us expect.

The flip-flop revolution hasn’t skirted India either, which is much more closely attuned now to global fashion trends. Vogue India recently wrote about Stoffa rain flip-flops, which are trimmed with bronze straps, have thick heel-like padding, and are priced at a cool Rs 2,750. Meanwhile, flip-flops under global brands like Adidas, Puma, Diesel and Evisu sell at Indian malls for Rs 500–1,000 a pair, even as designer flip-flops made by Spanish designer Agatha Ruiz de la Prada can go for as much as Rs 1,250. With Indian designers throwing in their own words of advice, it’s now generally acceptable to wear designer flip-flops to casual brunches, pool parties and outdoor festivals. Like in the US, it’s popular with women in sarongs or long skirts, and with men in long shorts and linen jackets perhaps.

Finally, after years of being relegated to the bathroom, the simple Hawaiian chappals have shed the stigma of the past. My mother, however, has now shifted to wearing bright Crocs. That’s a personal tragedy as far as I’m concerned, but trendsetters are always more fickle in their taste than late adopters.

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