It’s a good question. Recently, during Episode 5 of the final season of “Succession,” Shiv Roy dismisses her estranged husband, Tom, by dismissing the shiny white sneakers he chose to wear to a deal-making off-site, saying: “This is why people don’t take you seriously.”
It made for striking TV. But in the real world, is she right?
Consider the fact that Bryce Young recently took his place on the N.F.L. draft stage as the No. 1 pick in a pink Dior suit and white kicks and looked all the cooler for them. Or that the filmmaker Chloé Zhao wore Hermès white sneakers with her gown when she won an Oscar back in 2021. Once you start thinking about white sneakers, you start seeing them everywhere. Which suggests that the right move is not to abandon them but to consider, perhaps, exactly what they mean to you.
British Esquire called the white sneaker “the blank canvas upon which any modern look can be built.” Harper’s Bazaar crowed, “The best white sneakers can do it all.”
The fact is, more than 100 years after Keds introduced its white sneaker, almost 90 years since Chuck Taylor popularized the style with Converse and more than half a century since Stan Smith changed the game — and amid all the color-crazed mayhem of endlessly mutating sneaker culture — white sneakers remain the Platonic ideal of a shoe: eternal, versatile, comfortable. They suggest walking on clouds. They are normcore to the max.
But because they go with pretty much everything — maxi-dresses and minidresses, suits, khakis and blazers — how you wear them matters.
As part of a daily uniform, they serve as a generic punctuation mark, a subconscious suggestion of both practicality (easy to wear) and attention to detail (if you keep them clean). As a counterpoint to a more serious outfit, like a tuxedo or trouser suit, they offer a bit of energy and bounce. Paired with a floaty dress (maxi or mini), they add a bit of power and oomph. Material matters: Leather is more formal; canvas more casual. The appeal is in the contrast — and the key is the state of the shoe.
by Vanessa Friedman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Karwai Tang/WireImage
The fact is, more than 100 years after Keds introduced its white sneaker, almost 90 years since Chuck Taylor popularized the style with Converse and more than half a century since Stan Smith changed the game — and amid all the color-crazed mayhem of endlessly mutating sneaker culture — white sneakers remain the Platonic ideal of a shoe: eternal, versatile, comfortable. They suggest walking on clouds. They are normcore to the max.
But because they go with pretty much everything — maxi-dresses and minidresses, suits, khakis and blazers — how you wear them matters.
As part of a daily uniform, they serve as a generic punctuation mark, a subconscious suggestion of both practicality (easy to wear) and attention to detail (if you keep them clean). As a counterpoint to a more serious outfit, like a tuxedo or trouser suit, they offer a bit of energy and bounce. Paired with a floaty dress (maxi or mini), they add a bit of power and oomph. Material matters: Leather is more formal; canvas more casual. The appeal is in the contrast — and the key is the state of the shoe.
by Vanessa Friedman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Karwai Tang/WireImage
"Not long ago, I found myself wandering through Paris with a fake Celine handbag slung over my shoulder. In France, a country that prides itself on originating so much of the world’s fashion, punishments for counterfeiting are severe, to the point that I technically risked three years in prison just by carrying my little knockoff around. But the bag’s fraudulence was undetectable to human eyes. I was toting around a delicious, maddening secret: Like a ship remade with identical wood, the bag on my arm had been built on the same plan, with seemingly the same gleaming materials, as the “original.” Yet it was considered inauthentic, a trick, a cheat.
My plunge into the world of fantastically realistic counterfeit purses — known as “superfakes” to vexed fashion houses and I.P. lawyers, or “unclockable reps” to their enthusiastic buyers — began a couple of years earlier, in what I might characterize as a spontaneous fit of lunacy. (...)
Having grown up a first-generation immigrant whose family’s idea of splurging was a monthly dinner at Pizza Hut, I refused to be the type of person who lusted over luxury handbags. I had always understood that these artifacts were not for me, in the way debutante balls or chartered Gulfstreams were not for me. But, days later and still mired in the quicksand of quarantine, I found myself cracking my laptop and Googling “buy Celine Triomphe cheap.” This led me to a Reddit community of replica enthusiasts, who traded details about “trusted sellers” capable of delivering a Chanel 2.55 or Loewe Puzzle or Hermès Birkin that promised to be indistinguishable from the original, and priced at a mere 5 percent or so of the M.S.R.P. (...)
Untangling the problem of duplication in the fashion industry is like trying to rewrap skeins of yarn. Designer houses spend billions fighting dupes, but even real Prada Cleos and Dior Book Totes are made with machines and templates — raising the question of what, exactly, is unique to an authentic bag. Is it simply a question of who gets to pocket the money?"
