Mock if you must but Crocs have tiptoed back into style

As David Hockney’s shoes get the royal seal of approval, Laura Craik charts the hipster reinvention of these clumpy plastic clogs

Imagine the horror. A fortysomething London mum of my acquaintance comes home to find her fiftysomething husband wearing new shoes. To be precise, a new – £4 – pair of Croc-style shoes from Primark. “In white,” she reports back. “Which, frankly, is grounds for divorce.”

If you are nodding your head in agreement, you might want to reconsider. For Crocs – and croc-a-likes – are no longer the footwear permanently out of step with fashion. Indeed, they have found their place under the highest table in the land – the new King’s, to be precise, and on the feet of David Hockney OM.

Obviously, Hockney could wear a bin bag to the Palace and it would be OK: he’s David Hockney. Yet his choice of bright yellow Crocs is an interesting one. Now 85, Britain’s greatest living artist is frequently featured on bestdressed lists, where he is lauded for his cheerful knits, soft tailoring and bright accessories. No matter that Crocs come in a dizzying array of colours: for Hockney, yellow was probably the only choice. His art is infused with it: yellow is the colour of sunshine, and sunshine is a perennial theme in his work. That Hockney coordinated his trademark round glasses with his Crocs makes him even more of a dude.

Victoria Beckham may have said she’d “rather die” than wear them, but Hockney’s Crocs certainly won the favour of King Charles. “Your yellow galoshes! Beautifully chosen,” His Majesty remarked, presumably unaware of their correct name, despite his grandson, Prince George, owning a navy pair. In fact, yellow tends to be a more popular choice for toddlers than octogenarians, with most adults favouring more muted hues.

Many would argue that adults should steer clear of Crocs altogether, and that the only humans who can get away with them are the children to which they were first marketed. Their wide footbed, soft plastic exterior and easy-clean, waterproof properties make them perfect for pre-schoolers, though they have also found favour with hospital staff, kitchen staff, medical researchers and gardeners. In 2010, a three-year-old boy was saved from a fatal electric shock by his Crocs, with doctors saying that the foam resin shoes acted as insulators.

Crocs may have been sold as practical when they were first launched in 2004 but, in the intervening years, they have become progressively less so. Their journey from reviled rubber eyesores to coveted celebrity favourites is one of the great marketing triumphs of the 21st century, and further proof, if any were needed, that brand collaborations work. It’s an overlooked fact that their rehabilitation started with the Scottish designer Christopher Kane, the first fashion designer to put them on the catwalk. His spring/summer 2017 collection, shown at London Fashion Week in September 2016, saw Kane put every model in a pair of Crocs Classic – the clog’s most basic iteration – embellishing them with sparkling rocks. Many fashion editors were horrified, but the trend took off.

Since then, a slew of collaborations have followed, from the sublime to the ridiculous to the preposterous. In 2018, the rapper Post Malone designed a Croc featuring barbed-wire graphics that echoed his own face tattoos. The silliness of these paled into insignificance when Balenciaga launched a platform version in the same year which became one of the must-haves of the season.

When it comes to collaborating with Crocs, no brand, it seems, is too highbrow, lowbrow or cool. Brands who have lent their name to the shoe include Liberty London, Barneys New York, Palace Skateboards, Pizzaslime and KFC. Celebrities who have collaborated with Crocs include Drew Barrymore, Kiss, Takashi Murakami and Justin Bieber.

To understand the success of these collaborations is to first understand their allure to Gen Z, a notoriously tricky demographic for marketers. Gen Z loves nothing more than a limitededition “drop”, whereby a collection is released, often unexpectedly, thus fuelling demand. For Gen Z, Crocs function much like trainers do for older demographics: they’re a blank canvas on which collaborators can make their mark, in much the same way that Nikes were in the 1990s. Crocs’ most recent collaboration, with the cult American footwear designer Salehe Bembury is part of the reason that so many teenage and twentysomething males are padding around Britain in sweatpants and Crocs, rather than sweatpants and Nikes.

That Crocs sales were strong during lockdown – in April 2021, the brand reported a record 64 per cent rise in sales, making a total of $460million – is no surprise, since the clog was perfectly positioned to capitalise on a global desire for practicality and comfort. Now that lockdown is over, however, Crocs’ popularity shows no signs of abating. Sales figures from November report revenues of $985.1million (£813.9million), a 57 per cent increase when compared with 2021.

As for the drivers of this demand – the host of celebrities and notables who have been seen in Crocs – it would almost be quicker to list those who don’t own a pair. Their fanbase spans all ages: in the US, they’ve been seen on millennials including Rihanna, Kim Kardashian and Gigi and Bella Hadid, as well as midlifers including Brooke Shields, Jennifer Garner, Pharrell Williams, Adam Sandler and Heidi Klum. In the UK, they’re as popular with models, actresses and fashion influencers as they are with school-run mums and teens

Not all of us will share King Charles’s enthusiasm for David Hockney’s Crocs. Regardless, they’re the clog that ate the world, their fans firmly of the opinion that a life in plastic is too fantastic to rescind – whatever the occasion.