Child Of The 1980's

I remember that at some point during my childhood there was a real craze for slip on shoes, or loafers as they are perhaps more correctly called.  All the kids at school were wearing them with their white terry towelling socks and I wanted a pair too, for several reasons.

Firstly, they were easy to keep clean.  Shining your slip ons was simple, just apply polish, rub it in and buff, without having shoe laces keep getting in the way.  The tongues on my lace up shoes always ended up looking worn out because I couldn’t be bothered to remove the laces to clean them.

Sticking with the laziness motif, they were also easy to put on and take off.  Slip on, slip off (as Mr. Miyagi might say).  Laced shoes were more bothersome.  All that tying of bows was just too much hassle, plus you sometimes end up with a knot that you have to pick undone to get the shoe off.

Of course the real reason any kid wants anything is peer pressure.  I didn’t want to stand out with my normal lace up shoes.  In the end I never did get a pair, Mum always said something about my feet being the wrong width or some such excuse, but that was OK.  Not having a pair of slip ons paled into insignificance when the “what brand of trainers are you wearing?” question was asked…

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This entry is filed under Fashion and was posted on April 3rd, 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.