What Ever Happened to Velcro Strap Shoes?

In a prior post I remarked the "sandalization" of footwear and the inanity of the explanation of this as a matter of the fashion industry accommodating itself to "consumer demand" for cheap, casual, convenient footwear reflective of a more easygoing, less uptight, less unequal and hierarchical society. Rather it seems a matter of the business getting the consumer to take what they want them to take, which is "less for more" in the form of flimsy footwear at high prices, all as the aesthetic reflects the "leisure class" mentality of "conspicuous waste" (very expensive flimy shoes whose owners advertise not just their being able to afford the "pecuniary damage," but their plush lives requiring little foot protection, etc.), the ascent of which reflects the reality of a society which is more unequal, barbarically so, in a manner that makes the "market populist" obfuscations of the neoliberal era look ever more unconvincing.

All of this would seem underlined by what vanished as the sandal (and especially the flip-flop) became ubiquitous, the Velcro strap shoe. All the rage back in the '80s these seemed to represent a great advance in making shoes simultaneously well-fitting and sturdy, and convenient to put on--much more so than, for example, shoes with laces the wearer must tie. However, their moment didn't last long. Looking into the matter it seems only fair to point out that their solution was imperfect, given that over time Velcro straps come to work less well--wearing out more quickly than, for example, "lower-tech" solutions. Yet that does not seem the whole of the matter, as one could picture the shoes being designed so that the Velcro straps are conveniently replaceable--the user, after performing a switch (a bit of hassle which would save them a lot of hassle later on) tossing aside the worn-out piece of Velcro, but keeping the rest of the shoe. Others point to how the very convenience the shoes were supposed to provide was mocked as something befitting small children and the elderly but laughable in an able-bodied adult--but again that explanation is less than satisfying. After all, if the Velcro strap shoe seems like a "lazy" shoe in the eyes of the moralizing idiot who thinks any convenience is somehow unvirtuous, the sandals that so proliferated in the 1990s, particularly thonged ones, were if anything even "lazier," people slipping them on and off without even bending down to strap themselves into their shoes. Granting this some may say that however much that was the case the laziness was less obvious, such that the sandal-wearer got the benefit of the doubt that way, but this seems pretty thin as well--and altogether the most plausible reading seeming to me to be that industry just found it more profitable to sell those sandals than to sell those more materials- and workman-ship-intensive Velcro strap shoes, and certainly any such shoes where the straps would be replaceable.