“I wouldn’t be caught dead in flip-flops,” Tom Ford said in 2017, emphatic in his disdain for the kind of cisgender man–perhaps the least likely demographic to own exfoliating socks or visit pedicurists–who walks around metropolitan centers with their toes exposed. “I hate flip-flops.” The designer would doubtless baulk at the sheer number of people rediscovering Havaianas in 2024.
Take, for example, Zoë Kravitz, who was yesterday afternoon photographed strolling around New York in a flannel shirt, a bucket hat, sweatpants and $650 rubber sandals from The Row. She looked like she had just been tending to a vegetable patch in an allotment garden, which is perhaps the ultimate example of luxurious living: slow-paced, off-grid and anti-grind. Are those qualities not also intrinsic to the flip-flop itself?
“You roll up to the bar in a pair of Havaianas and you still look good? That’s cool,” fashion critic Biz Sherbert said back in August when discussing the allure of a cosmopolitan flip-flop. (See also: Aaron Esh, who juxtaposed silken tailoring with comma-shaped thong sandals within his spring 2024 collection.) “The casual signaling that you’ve been to a different destination recently is very chic. You just walked off the airplane and now you’re going about your business? It’s unmatched. Once you start wearing them, you realize that you’ve been a loser for not wearing them all along.”