Fashion world's head over heels with boat shoes

Sometimes fashion just seems like Groundhog Day with better outfits.

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Designers vanish only to reappear suddenly (looking at you, Alessandro Michele, who is the creative designer of Valentino).

Trends sputter out and abruptly are back. Skinny jeans were cool until everyone was wearing overdrop-crotch sized khakis everyone, that is, except that cadre of teen style-setters intent on bringing back 2000s-era jeggings.

Consider, in this vein, the boat shoe, signifier of all things preppy.

All but defunct as an element of a stylish wardrobe, it has now become a hot item. This is "the year of the boat shoe", says Vogue magazine, which is far from alone in observing a proliferation of fashionable maritime footwear.

There they were on the Miu Miu spring 2024 runway in Paris, in what was widely considered one of Miuccia Prada's best collections for that label in years.

They were also at Fendi's fall 2024 menswear show in Milan, where the moccasin-style shoe had been stamped to look like crocodile.

"Every few years there's another wave," Lisa Birnbach, the 65-yearold author of The Official Preppy Handbook and its sequel True Prep, said of boat shoes such as Sperry Top-Siders or the similarly beloved, if nautically inappropriate, L.L. Bean Camp Moccasins (they scuff decks).