We beg you: stop wearing flip-flops with jeans, it looks terrible
It's a distinctly Australian way of dressing, thongs and denim, but it's time to admit it looks terrible
‘WICKED’ STAR JONATHAN BAILEY has given us concrete proof that, no matter how handsome, talented, charming or downright nice you might be, nothing can make the combination of thongs worn with jeans – or any long pair of pants – look good.
Twice, now, the 37-year-old multihyphenate performer has attempted to convince the world that thongs are either red carpet material (no) or a fashionable alternative to real footwear (also, no). First, the London photocall for Jurassic World: Rebirth back in June. And more recently, as reported by WWD, while visiting Los Angeles.
I don’t care that, on both occasions, Bailey was wearing the Dune sandals by The Row that retail for over $1000. Rubber’s rubber. You could have told me they were a pair of $35 Havianas and I would have believed you. Nor do I care that Bailey appears to be on very good terms with a talented pedicurist. Bare toes peeking out from under the cuff of your pants just look like 10 tiny mole-rats escaping from your trousers.
Perhaps it’s Bailey’s own Australian connections that have been a bad influence on the Brit. While Bailey was visiting for the Wicked press tour, he let slip that his time was spent trick-or-treating around Sydney’s Inner West with family members who are now living here in Australia. In the pain-flecked, loose denim, white T-shirt and tinted Cubitts sunglasses, Bailey certainly would have passed for a Gold Coast native.
Nor is he alone. Chris Hemsworth has famously touted them. Bradley Cooper was recently spotted wearing a pair on the streets of New York, no less. On those infamous pavements? Hard pass.
Australia’s cultural exports are, by and large, things we can be proud of: Nicole Kidman, breakfast culture, INXS, decent chardonnays and even better beers, merino wool, and the elevation of self-deprecation and sarcasm to an art form.
But the one thing that never should have left our borders was the belief that thongs (or flip-flops, if I absolutely have to) can ever be worn with jeans. True, my reasoning can easily be split between subjective and objective. The former, I think they’re heinous and have no desire to see anyone’s feet. In the latter camp, science has shown they’re actually bad for you, with prolonged use leading to back and feet issues, not to mention exposing your feet to countless bacteria and fungi.
But the heart of my hatred for seeing thongs worn outside of appropriate situations, like in the gym showers or at the beach, stems from the fact that it just looks sloppy. It looks like you’re taking out the rubbish, only you’re standing on an international stage promoting a multi-million dollar film. It looks like you just gave up at the finish line.
While the thong-and-denim combo isn’t something that is uniquely Australian, it is something that is immediately identifiable as an Australian way of dressing. Ask any millennial who lived through the skinny jeans pandemic and they’ll have, hidden deep in the archives, a photo of themselves in a flannel shirt, Lee stovepipe jeans and a pair of thongs. Summer or winter, seasons didn’t matter. The feet would be breathing.
It’s a look that’s endemic to Australian society in history, too, not just an off-shoot of contemporary casualisation. A favourite Instagram account, Retro Sydney, recently posted a picture of a politician from idyllic Avalon in New South Wales’ northern beaches canvassing the locals for their votes . . . in jeans and thongs.
With the sheer variety of summer-appropriate footwear now available to men, from loafers to enclosed sandals that offer much better support and mobility, thongs (fine, flip-flops) should be relegated to the dustbin of fashion history, along with fedoras and tongue piercings.
Related:
