By Neil Coupe
Twenty-five years or so ago I remember being astonished hearing something on the lines of average Americans owning three pairs of sneakers, or as we call them, trainers.
At the time, in the UK trainers were the preserve of young people, or of people playing sport.
The same pair would be used for basketball, squash, tennis, table tennis, five-a-side football, running, walking, going out, and everything else.
I do not believe that many people felt deprived about only having a single pair of trainers.
We have just spent the weekend away in a city with a major café culture that lent itself to one of our favourite pastimes, that of people watching.
Admittedly nothing else that we witnessed was quite as impressive as the off-duty fishmonger sucking thoughtfully on his pipe with a handlebar moustache, a beret and a magnificent pair of clogs.
My wife then pointed out that almost everyone else seemed to be wearing trainers.
Once we had spotted that, we could not take our eyes off people’s footwear.
Old and young, rich and poor, the stylish as well as those people seeking function over form. everyone was wearing trainers.
From our vantage point, there seemed to be more shops selling trainers than selling shoes, and unlike the shoe shops, there were no closing down sales.
The brand well-known for three stripes sells a range known as ‘Superstar Crib’ with six different sizes, enabling three-month-old babies, still in their crib, to be proudly wearing similar footwear to the many generations preceding them.
During the summer, I spent a day with two octogenarian uncles – one in black trainers, the other in white trainers. It did not appear to be in any way strange or unusual.
Even in the world of politics, during the recent Conservative Leadership election, there was a brief furore around the fact that Mr Sunak had been wearing a very stylish pair of trainers, which in itself was probably A Good Thing, but as they cost £335, this was A Bad Thing.
The Leader of the Opposition was also guilty of this misdemeanour by being photographed getting into a car, while also wearing an expensive pair of trainers, albeit costing a mere £200 instead of £335.
Looking at the website of a major supplier, there is a mind-boggling array of options, for sports such as handball, tennis, golf, skateboarding, mountain biking, hiking etc, as well as whether the customer requires a heritage style.
Perfectly reasonably there are different types of running shoes depending on an individual’s running style, in other words, when a runner needs to have shoes to compensate for his or her pronation.
Among the 1,830 options in my size, perhaps more surprisingly, shoes are now available for people participating in esports.
These items are described as ‘Active Gaming Footwear’.
So, for £80 it is possible to buy footwear for, well, sitting inside a house, in front of a screen, for hours on end. Obviously, they cannot be worn outside the house, and nor is it obvious what these items can do that other garments, such as socks, can achieve, in terms of being ‘quite comfortable’ around the house.
Perhaps those innovative Germans have just reinvented the slipper.
