Fashion
Why Garden Clogs Are Suddenly Everywhere and How They Became a Fashion Trend
Once reserved for gardening, these practical slip-ons are making their way into street style.
The shoe your grandmother wore to prune tomatoes is now the shoe you’ll spot on Bedford Avenue, in a JJJJound drop and on a Bode runway. Garden clogs, those rounded, cartoonishly utilitarian slip-ons, have crossed over from the toolshed into the style conversation playing out from downtown Manhattan to London.
It’s the kind of ironic-functional shape fashion circles can’t resist right now, and the ascent has been building for years.
How did garden clogs become a fashion trend?
Credit the Bode cosign. When Emily Adams Bode Aujla slotted Plasticana clogs into her Fall 2020 runway collection, the French gardening brand picked up exactly the kind of designer validation that pulls a utilitarian object into the fashion canon. From there, the shape kept gathering momentum with the right people in the right rooms.
By GQ’s May 2024 reporting, Plasticana’s Gardana clogs had become a quiet staple for shoppers in Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan, worn with streetwear and treated like any other weird-great sneaker. Broo...