It’s been a big summer for viral footwear. It feels like just yesterday that I was “reporting” on the shoe that took Copenhagen Fashion Week by storm: the heeled Havaiana, an invention that some considered a stroke of podiatric genius and others proof that God really is dead. This week, yet another attention-stealing sandal has taken over our feeds, though this one seems to have stirred rather less controversy. I’m talking about this chunky-soled Loewe slide.
At a glance, it’s hard to see what all the fuss is about. The shoe appears to be a perfectly respectable sandal in black vegetable-tanned calfskin, with tasteful chrome buckle detailing across the upper. To be honest, it was only the “when you see it…” prompt beneath an Instagram post that made me pause and peer a little more closely. Granted, when I did see it, I was pretty impressed: rather than serving a purely functional purpose, the buckles had been artfully pivoted to spell out the Spanish house’s name.
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Of course, transforming functional design details into embellishments is not, in itself, cause to stop the press – nor is putting a logo on the upper of a leather slide. What struck me here, though, was the subtlety. Rather than scream its presence – as with a printed monogram or hardware logo might – the Type sandals’ branding could pretty easily fly beneath the radar. When it is clocked, however, the response is less an eye-roll at the garishness of the gesture than an impressed acknowledgement of the design’s cleverness.
That may be a lot of thought to devote to a few buckles on a sandal, but there’s something telling about simultaneously flaunting the label you’re wearing and keep it somewhat on the DL – or, at least, to be sly about it.
Loewe has taken a similar tack in the past. See: the house’s Petal Anagram slides, from its Paula’s Ibiza collaboration, which transform the swirling “L”s of its pre-Jack and Lazaro logo into a web-like motif in leather piping across the upper. Beyond Loewe, Prada has long made muted iterations of its distinctive downward-pointing triangle a key design detail on pockets and at the napes of jackets. At Dior, meanwhile, the first It-bags of Jonathan Anderson’s tenure have forgone loud logo placements in favour of subtler integrations of the house insignia into their construction. The Cigale – spotted in the crooks of Charli XCX’s and Monica Barbaro’s arms – incorporates the Dior name into its inner handle link, while the Diorly spells it out in a chain detail running down the front of its shoulder strap. Even Sofia Testino, a name currently on the lips of every fashion editor in London, has tapped into the mood: in a preview of her forthcoming collection, we spotted a pair of tailored trousers with belt loops twisted to spell out the rising designer’s surname.
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While subtle logo placements – specifically those embedded within typically functional design details – are by no means new, there’s something about their sudden prevalence, and the apparent appetite for them, that speaks to the in-between space fashion currently occupies. With brands no longer caught in a moot race to produce the quietest possible luxury, logos are no longer the pariah motifs they once were. At the same time, for all the Noughties nostalgia and reissues of the era’s monogram-splashed It-bags, loud logos worn as badges of pride no longer carry quite the cachet they once did.
To my eyes, this turn towards what you might call low-key logomania speaks to a continued demand for subtlety – for not appearing outwardly gauche while being savvy enough to deploy the capital of a logo with a degree of self-awareness. To be in on the gag. It also speaks to the desire for luxury brands to justify the value of the products that bear their names. After all, these aren’t simply symbols slapped onto emulable objects. They are insignia worked into the design itself; marks of identification that double as testaments to the craft invested in a piece – and that are, in themselves, worth a closer look.