Alot of things have claimed to break the internet. Kim Kardashian’s bottom. The Sexy Felon. Harambe. Fashion claims to break it a lot. Already this summer, a handful of luxury accessories – including an improbably large £620 summer hat that led to the factory where they are made running out of straw – have caused the internet to buckle. Those that do break it tend to make it on to the revered Lyst Index, a ranking of the most coveted fashion items in the world, tracked as much by searches as sales. Released last week, it included – for the first time – a pair of £50 trainers.
While the inclusion of the Fila Disruptor trainer shouldn’t be surprising – sales of trainers were up 10% last year to $4bn (£3bn) – it is. The list habitually features expensive accessories, known as the “gateway drugs” of fashion – non-essential luxury items that are cheaper, relatively speaking – that drive revenue more than actual clothes. This year’s “gateway” items include a Gucci logo belt, Celine sunglasses and an Off White belt. The appearance of the Fila trainers – which cost between £50 and £80, can be bought on the high street and have a modest 62k searches on Instagram, compared with the Gucci belt’s half a million – is more than an anomaly. It exposes a hole in the system: people are ogling affordable trainers as much as they are Chanel espadrilles.
Why are they this season’s most-wanted footwear (they sit at No 2 on the list)? For one, you could call them ugly, which ticks fashion’s most tenacious trend of late. Style-wise, they sit in the same camp as Balenciaga’s Triple S trainers, the yardstick for this aesthetic. Shape-wise, they resemble the increasingly popular Buffalo boots 2.0, except that they cost half the price (Office Shoes claims a search for one leads to a search for the other). And, they’re also what is known in some corners as “beaters”– trainers that look good dirty or battered.
That they’re called Disruptors is apt. But largely irrelevant, given they are mostly sold out.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
