This summer, on a hot New Hampshire afternoon, I bought my first pair of clogs. For the past month at my job, working as what was essentially a backcountry lodge cook, I had been wearing my co-worker’s green suede clogs every chance I got. The long, long hours on my feet cooking four-course meals for hungry hikers were taxing, and the relatively flat soles of my trusty Blundstones were not cutting it. Wearing Kathryn’s clogs felt like walking on a firm compressive cloud. Life changing. And, as she always mentioned, they really made me feel like a chef. Slipping on her clogs felt like formally suiting up for the day, slipping into an alter ego.
And so, on the second floor of a popular outdoors store in Lincoln, I bought brand new brown waterproof Dansko clogs and hiked them up to the lodge that day.
Although I knew I was buying my clogs for professional purposes, I also felt aware that I was falling for a burgeoning fashion trap. I had witnessed the growing trend on campus last spring semester, and knew it would be present this fall. Sure enough, clogs can be found on plenty of feet strolling through Gordon Commons and strutting on campus sidewalks this semester. Maybe not as widely popular as other trends, it still catches my eye, especially given that I feel like barely anyone was rocking clogs three years ago.
My mom, my original fashion north star, hated clogs. She found them ugly and impractical. Cursed with narrow heels, she pointed out that your feet would constantly slip out of the shoe. In the past, I probably would not have considered letting my work relationship with clogs continue into campus life, relegating them to the back of my closet along with my summer crocs. Yet despite this childhood bias, I now wear them at Vassar and even feel myself becoming an advocate. As my friend Harrison Phipps ’26, a Birkenstock clog wearer, said, it feels good to be able to slip your foot into a shoe and just go.
So, where is this trend coming from? A quick Google search revealed a series of articles from publications like British Vogue, Who What Wear, and Cosmopolitan claiming clogs as the new shoewear trend of the year—dating from February 2025 to as recently as late August. Most publications name the trend as the “70s returning!” and that “Boho chic is back!” Although I have zero fashion expertise, I can say fashion is certainly cyclical, so perhaps this is just Gen Z discovering the boho craze of the early aughts that derived from ’70s inspiration. Yet the internet mood board inspo and shopping guides for that variety of clog seem in opposition to what I actually see in my life. The Gen Z clog wearers around me seem to have taken a distinctly more grungy, ugly, utilitarian and, dare I say, indie sleaze take on the clog.
How does Vassar’s environment play into this? Part of what is fun about Vassar campus life is students’ devotion to style. Committed to aesthetics, finding interesting clothes and dressing up, campus can be a runway of diverse looks. Campus fashion becomes its own language, both one of fun and expression—play is more fun when everyone buys in—while also sometimes one of social capital. Shoes like the clog show that this culture seemingly focused on personal style is not immune to trend. Chatting with Caroline Belanger ’28 while working on this article, she summed up the power of the clog trend perfectly, saying, “I think they’re plaguing Vassar, in a great way. I think they look really cool, but they’re the next like, Vassar indie thing to do and have.”
So why the clog? Margot Vaughan ’26, who has loyally been wearing clogs since freshman year and almost exclusively wears her pair, says, “For me, it’s practicality. And it’s like, there are shoes that I like when they get paint on them or something. So if I’m doing sculpture, I don’t care about them. I don’t have to think about them.”
Even if Vaughan’s affinity for clogs is long-standing, personal and practical, she sees the current campus trend and notes larger patterns influencing the shift. She posits that clogs are associated with an artsy and also down-to-earth aesthetic—something unpretentious and casually fashionable. Yet through being anti-pretentious, it returns to pretension. Ahhh, Vassar. Clogs are also certainly in line with the workwear aesthetic—Carhartts feel cemented as a staple on campus. Vaughan summarizes, “It’s like trying to seem like you don’t care, but you deeply care. And also this appropriation of workwear and of clothes that are associated with not being able to afford clothing, and that becoming a trend of like, try to not show that you’re being wealthy in an environment like Vassar, where there’s a lot of criticism of wealth and capitalism.”
This critique is not meant to chastise clog wearers out there; both Vaughan and I will continue to clomp around in them. Rather, I think it is an interesting exercise to examine why certain fashion items take hold, especially if it is a Dansko.
I would also add that although sneakers will never die, we have seen a shift away from the sneaker-only lifestyle. Replacing streetwear is a fashion ethos more focused on luxury vintage. Loafers, cowboy boots, Frye boots and even Mary Janes—we are now evidently interested in “the shoe.” Clogs may just be another iteration in this progression, but a distinctly more comfortable one.