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Click clack. Squelch squelch. There’s a trend among microtrends here at Copenhagen Fashion Week, and it’s splitting attendees and their toes into two factions. In one camp, people are wearing a rubber flop, often a Havaiana, reminiscent of childhood summers. In the other, they’re slipping on an elegant, leather thong sandal with a low stiletto heel. You can see, hear, and practically feel the difference between the two flops.
Flip flops, the subject of much debate after their top ranking on the Lyst Q2 index, have been around for a minute now. They’re revealing nature is inflammatory for both style and urban cleanliness purposes. But in Copenhagen, they’re everywhere—exposed toes are de rigueur. In fact, many might say that the Copenhagen street style set invented the urban cool girl flip-flop years ago. As such, the debate here has moved past their relevancy and instead centers on how they’re being worn.
I tapped someone, who happened to be a Lithuanian fashion writer in town for the week, on the shoulder at the Skall Studio show. She was wearing a pair of black Zara flip-flops with a little stiletto kitten heel. “They fit everywhere,” she told me, “every outfit, every place.” The rest of her outfit consisted of a leather bomber over a silk, lace-trimmed slip dress, belted at the waist, over a pair trousers, complete with a printed headscarf and little sunglasses. “They’re really ‘Scandi style,’” she noted of her shoes and how they helped her dress for the city we were standing in.
On our own team, Jaclyn Cohen, senior fashion and accessories editor, wore a similar pair of heeled black thong sandals from Toteme with a blue draped Kallmeyer dress a few days prior. “A leather heeled flip flop is perfectly ironic; it’s a classic thong style sandal that’s laidback but elevated—literally and figuratively,” she said. Even more ironically, that’s not Cohen’s typical choice. “Believe it or not, I more often lean towards a rubber flat flip-flop,” she says. “I’m nearly 5’10, so flats are usually my thing.” But when in Rome—or Copenhagen—go for “some subtle drama—because why not!”
Jalil Johnson, writer and founder of the Substack Consider Yourself Cultured, chose a rubber pair from the Row for his Copenhagen Fashion Week debut, “mainly out of practicality,” he says. His outfit also consisted of camouflage cargo pants, layered button-downs, turquoise beads, and a magenta satin clutch. At first glance, Johnson’s style may seem superfluous, but there’s typically an undercurrent of utility, as evidenced by the light layers and functional trousers—clothes to serve him, not the other way around. “In this specific instance, “what I’ve learned from going to fashion week over the years is that comfort does often win out over fashion, especially in Copenhagen; there are so many cobblestones!”
Fashion week, no matter the city, is funny because one second, you’re in the middle of a gathering of relatively like-minded, or at least similarly employed, individuals all likely engaging in some degree of sartorial experimentation. The next, you’re back amidst regular people in their everyday outfits. Later that day, I was walking through a park to another show and spotted a pair of rubber Havaianas on a nearby woman who looked really cool. She was wearing baggy shorts, a simple sweater with a T-shirt hanging out beneath, and pale pink Havaianas—that kind of effortless style that probably still takes a good amount of effort. Amid the locals—actual Scandinavians, I spotted a pair on a different stranger treading through the park, another on a publicist working the door of a show, standing for hours in the heat, among numerous others. (They seemed to be having a better time than the ones of us hobbling over cobblestones.)
Copenhagen Fashion Week has always been an incubus for microtrends—super-puffed sleeves à la Cecilie Bahnsen, bright patterns courtesy of Ganni, fur trimmed jackets from the now defunct Saks Potts. Even the schrunchie craze was born here. In fact, Scandi-girl style has now been copied so often we’ve lost touch with what it actually is. But it makes sense that the flip flop debate would reach its apex here.
There are pros and cons to all facets of this microtrend, but in chatting with everyone, it seems you have two paths to take to find your place in the flip-flop debate. Would you rather look good so you feel good or feel good so you look good?
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