To help me better understand why anyone would want to wear a sock and a shoe at the same time, I consulted the hippest person I know that is not Julianne Escebedo Shepherd—my sister, Shaina Travis, who offered the following: “I like the Adidas City Sock because they hit under the ankle which makes them just stretchy high socks basically. If I could afford the Balanciaga ones, I would 100 percent own them. Sock-inspired footwear looks good on most everyone because it fits to your leg. It gives me the illusion of an ‘ankle.’”
Despite this rousing defense of what I view to be an indefensible shoe, I maintain that snockers must be burned and destroyed—preferably in front of a Supreme store full of young men clamoring for overpriced sweaters.
Julianne
I own nothing in the key of Supreme by design, but you know what? I fux with a Snocker. Let me tell you why (and it’s not just because my current kicks fetish is “the shoes I would wear to a rave in 1999”).
A snocker elongates the leg. By providing a seamless line between the foot and the ankle, it lends an amount of elegance to any outfit, even perhaps a sweaty cycle pant; in structure, it is the Vetements sock boot of sneakers, which as we all know is very, very sexy, but more comfortable and potentially more affordable. As an item to fetishize, they play to futurism, a sort of optimistic antidote to uncertain times. If no mere mortal seems capable of taking down Donald Trump, they seem to say, then why not fantasize about a fictional superhero— Luke Skywalker, say—don his style of dress, and pretend we’re all actually living on Tattoine?
Additionally, snockers are simply practical. They are a shoe that cannot come off, which is handy for bike rides and roller coasters that go upside-down. Snockers are, quite literally, the best.
Megan
If an army of snocker-clad hypebaes dressed in various confusing black garments manages to penetrate the security surrounding President Donald Trump and take him down while screaming “WOMEN ARE THE FUTURE AND SO ARE FUCKIN’ SNOCKERS MY DUDE,” I will come around so fast to this trend that necks will break watching me change my course.
That said, I will concede to the practicality of a snocker in the two examples provided—bike rides and upside-down roller coasters. Fine. But I hate socks and would rather wear no shoes, and while a snocker does eliminate the idea of socks—visually, at least—you still have to wear them. What if they get smushed down around your ankle and you need to pull them back up over your heel? What if you have poor circulation to your extremities? What if you decide to get a pedicure and you have to take off the snockers but they’re a little too tight so you don’t get a pedicure and instead show up to the function with bad toes? What if you don’t have ankles, really, and the snockers only draws further attention, sending you into a spiral of self-deprecation and despair from which escape is futile?
Fashion-wise, I get it. Practicality-wise, my friend, I’m not so sure.
