During a recent editorial meeting, conversation turned to a pair of The Row flip-flops at the centre of this week’s fashion discourse. Not because of any innovative design details, nor the famous women that have been photographed wearing them, but because they’re priced at £670.
The arts desk was bemused. The fashion desk less so. Because while the Dune Classics are expensive – and yes, perhaps egregiously so for an elevated-(ish) version of a thonged sandal you can pick up from a seaside petrol station with a fistful of loose change – everything with a “luxury” label costs too much.
So much so, in fact, that even some of the world’s wealthiest shoppers are turning away from high fashion (if you can call it that) and seeking value for money. Take, for example, Dakota Johnson, who was yesterday afternoon photographed strolling through Los Angeles in a well-worn kid’s T-shirt (purchased two years ago at The Row) with humble Birkenstocks.
If the Dune Classics are the latest example of fashion’s preoccupation with repackaging the pedestrian as ultra-premium – and this is nothing new, of course, given Saint Laurent was at one point selling cigarettes in the ’80s – Johnson’s Big Buckle Arizonas are perhaps the antidote: a rare and refreshing basic in a culture awash with exorbitant status symbols.
