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Tags: Shoes / Style / Dr. Martens / Travel Gear / → All Tags

Doc Martens: Travel Footwear Extraordinaire

For most people, travel involves a fair amount of walking, and it's the rare guidebook that doesn't advise you to pack at least one pair of comfortable walking shoes for your vacation. Naturally, the footwear industry has a slew of high-tech, lightweight urban hiking boots that are designed for comfort and support on the cobblestones, gravel roads, and concrete sidewalks of the world, but for my money, there's just no improving on the original. With a history that dates back to the 1940's, the Dr. Martens shoe company has always created footwear that's rugged, practical, and almost accidentally stylish. Its iconic boot, the Dr. Martens 1460, first gained popularity with postmen, factory workers, and transport unions when it was released in England in 1960, but it wasn't long before skinheads, mods, punks, and other subculture rockers made the brand their own.

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Tags: World Cup / Style / → All Tags

Is There an Asian Posh?

The endearingly limp-wristed Thursday Styles section of the New York Times is at it again, this time with a round-up of World Cup hairstyles and the fashion designers who love them. With the increasing popularity of soccer in all markets, the designers are using soccer players to sell high fashion. First, those players need good haircuts.

We ourselves admit to wondering what David Beckham's tonsorial mode of expression would be for the tournament, and aside from a soupcon of mullet to his coif, it's rather unremarkable. That doesn't mean that world-class hair is absent from the World Cup, though.

There's Loco--we mentioned him before, but he plays for Angola and has a shaved head save a single forelock. There's Christian Wilhelmsson, who plays for Sweden with a rather distinctive ratail, and there's in inimitable Hidetoshi Nakata. He plays for Japan. Also something of a clotheshorse, Nakata is known as "Asian Becks", according to the Times. Yeesh, classy stuff, Thursday Styles.

Why clothing designers would want soccer players, who despite their fame are only a tiny step up from hockey players in terms of stylishness (Becks, both Asian and regular, excluded) is beyond us. Unless we're in for a season of mullet and rat tail inspired suits. Then we'll know the apocalypse is nigh.

Related Stories:
·   Bleach it Like Beckham [NY Times]
·   World Cup NYC [Jaunted]