I've been wondering lately about the new fashion - common among friends, family members, stars and everyday people alike - of wearing plastic shoes (see illustration #1 and #2 for examples). I'm not only wondering, I'm actually a bit intrigued by it: How come people spend money on that kind of shoes, and sometimes even (if they buy the "originals") a lot of money? The margin between the value of raw materials and the actual price they cost seems ridiculous to me. Why would I spend so much money on a product that is basically made out of the same material as the shopping bags I get for free in the supermarket?
Granted, capitalism as a system is based (among other things) on enlarging the margin between production value and market value; and basically this margin is very, very expandable - as can be seen in our current example. This reaches a point where the market value has virtually nothing to do with the price of production of certain goods; market value is in fact not measurable through the real costs of production, it is about symbolic value - about the image you communicate through the aquisition of certain products (this is what - very tellingly - marketing is all about).
So what does one communicate with wearing those kinda shoes, besides - of course - the very basic message that you're trendy and fashionable and hip (to speak in the parlance of our times).
I've noticed that people wearing plastic shoes of the kind you can see in illustration #2 very often emphasize their commodity and convenience: They're sort of the pig of shoe fashion, insofar as they are all-purpose shoes (just like pigs eat everything). You can wear them for camping, inside and outside the house, they're really light and easy to clean, fairly undestroyable I would presume, etc. You're a brisk, efficient, active person who can't really spend much time on worrying about wearing the right shoes for all the different things you do during the day; you just want something on your feet that will fit for whatever activity your about to engage in, even if it's just going down to the mail box to collect the newspaper. Those kind of shoes are a very illustrative example of the very wise sentence my handicraft teacher used to tell us: form follows function (high heels, for example, do not follow this maxime at all. I read a quote by some IT-girl in the fashion-glam magazine I bought recently, and what she said was: "Once you've accepted the idea that you're not supposed to walk in high heel shoes, it actually works pretty well").
The plastic shoes also come in all sort of colours, signaling that you're basically a happy and fairly self-confident person, a person that doesn't mind wearing, say, bright yellow shoes and thus run around looking like a duck. So the paradox here is: they're fashionable shoes that pretend not to be fashionable at all, but merely useful. They're sort of shoe-ish understatement. More understatement, and you'd have to wear rubber boots or no shoes at all.
But, judging from my point of view, there's also a second dimension in the market value of plastic shoes, very tellingly incarnated by the shoes like you can see in illustration #1. If I look at them, I am reminded of my childhood: we would wear similar shoes (though without the very trendy pointy end) at the seaside. This, of course, also follows the first, understatement-component: Children don't worry about the design of their outfit or the looks of their appearance (and shoes), but merely want something to comfortably run around with in the dirt. By wearing these shoes you're thus also signaling that you're (still) in touch with your inner child; a topic that is also recurrent in CEO seminars. You want to be in touch with your inner child, because it symbolizes creativity, spontaneity, a certain simplicity, a fresh and unconsumed look at the world and its inhabitants. (I think the inner child is the Rousseauian homme naturel of our times; a regulative idea symbolizing the unconsumed and uncorrupted origin.) If you're in touch with your inner child, you obviously need shoes that will signal this inner attitude to the outside world - hence the shoes. They're the symbol of a sort of a second, but immensely more cool childhood, because now of course you're an adult, and you can actually do all the things you've always wanted to do (like for example wearing bright pink plastic shoes), without anybody telling you off.
Two wise men once said two wise sentences, namely The medium is the message, and You cannot not communicate.
PS: Speaking of hip - did you know that Chardonnay is the new Bourdeaux?
Illustration #1
Illustration #2
Illustration #2
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