Uggs
Some things never fail to put a smile on my face - Teenage Fanclub songs, Charlie Brooker’s Guardian columns, the theme tune to 70s sitcom Man about the House, ugg boots… Yes, ugg boots, the Australian ‘fashion footwear’, are absolutely guaranteed to make me smirk.
You see, where I grew up in the 80s, the sort of people who wore ugg boots were the sort of people who freely and shamelessly teamed said boots with skin tight black jeans, t-shirts advertising a particular variety of bourbon and a mullet hair cut. If you wanted to advertise yourself as the kind of bloke whose idea of a good time was driving repeatedly up and down the main street in a hotted up car with a slab of VB beer in the back, sharing your AC/DC records with the whole town, then you wore ugg boots.
So obviously when I saw some trendy 20-something women with Jennifer Anniston hairdos yesterday wearing ugg boots I just couldn’t stop myself from smiling. Ah, cultural context is everything isn’t it?
May 20th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
It took me ages to realise that Ugg was a brand and not a comment on the look of the things. As to mistranslated fashion english football scarves were fashionable in new york a while ago it wa strange to see them worn casually and in non aligned way, the coolsters where buying them for the colour / pattern etc. One girl pronounced Aston Villa in a spanish way, it was quite funny.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
BLTP, I never thought of football scarves as a fashion item. I suppose its much the same in a way as people wearing Che Guevara t-shirts because they’re trendy. Good for profile raising amongst gormless youth though as you pointed out in an earlier post…
May 20th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I can’t imagine any fella wearing Uggs - they just seem so girly? And the ol’ tootsies must be roasting wearing them in Australian weather? Why did they ever come up with them? It’s like the Swedes inventing Speedos or something .
May 20th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Well PM, apparently ugg boots were developed by sheep shearers to keep their feet warm - it does get cold in the winter in some parts of Australia. I’d never really thought of them as girly, more like… funny looking.
Just found this in the Daily Mail - might be the first time I’ve ever agreed with them. Just read the page title, it sums it all up! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-497170/The-UGGly-truth-Theyre-hot-smelly-bad-feet-Ugg-boots-popular.html