Caine Blog

[Pictures coming soon, possibly by Sunday.  Whenever I can head down to Lee Avenue and discreetly snap some photos.

The first thing I noticed last Sunday as I walked around Lee Avenue?  The children’s footwear.  Crocs of all colors, green and teal and black and white, strapped to the feet of young pais-bearing boys and ankle-dressed girls.  One image: a child, perhaps 7, rides around town on a tricycle; his feet are a resplendent neon green, the colors - so bright! - standing in opposition to the black and white garb he wears all the time, and will wear for the rest of his life.

For those who monitor micro-trends, this one might seem obscure.  It is, to some extent, but it’s also illuminating and baffling: how did Crocs make it onto the “approved footwear” list for Hasidic children, which traditionally contains only Keds?  And how did Crocs achieve such wicked market saturation amongst this community?

Without speaking to members of the Hasidic community, we may never know the answer.  But surely the almost unanimous preference for Crocs among the Hasidic youth speaks to the shoes’ connotations of fun, of not taking yourself too seriously, of letting your shoes be the fashion accessory that defines your entire look.  A shoe, through its sheer vivacity, that serves to trump whatever else your wearing.  When your selection of clothing is limited by rules of “modesty” - and when you’re a man, this is very restrictive - something as simply as a Croc has the power to unleash the imagination.

It’s for all the same reasons above, incidently, that everyone else in America hates Crocs.  They’re clunky.  They steal the show, obscuring rather than complementing, like someone interrupting a meeting with a megaphone.  They make careful composition meaningless; if you’re wearing a Brioni suit with Crocs, you may as well be wearing a swimsuit.  The power of the Croc derives from its amplitude.

The real question, for me, is whether we can consider this a rebellion.  Crocs are immodest, but expression isn’t necessarily the antonym of modesty.  Surely someone can be modest while also transcending the black-and-white of his or her quotidian existence, especially when that existence is literally black and white.  Then again, I’m not the one defining ‘modesty’.

Future installments: Hasidic women and Jackie O; Kids wearing matching clothes