The year of the loafer: there’s a new flat on the f’row as Gucci loafers replace ubiquitous Stan Smiths

Michele has a penchant for dusting off forgotten items from the brand’s archive and reminding us why they were brilliant
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Emma McCarthy1 March 2016

The fashion industry’s collective appetite for the next big thing means turning up at a fashion show to find someone else in your sweater/shoes/entire ensemble isn’t an exception but a high probability.

For proof of this theory, see the recent Stan Smith phenomenon.

Overnight, the capital’s taste-makers decided en masse that a pair of white-and-green tennis trainers, first popular in the late Seventies, was precisely what was missing from their wardrobes. And in turn, refused to leave the house in anything else.

But five years after we first got acquainted with Stan (counting from the moment Céline designer Phoebe Philo stepped out in a pair to take her catwalk bow in 2011) a new footwear fetish has taken hold. Enter the Gucci loafer - the f’row’s new favourite flat.

At Milan Fashion Week, an event once synomous with towering stilettos, the ubiquitous Stan Smith was replaced with rows of neat, polished horsebit loafers. But while we like to imagine that this is the result of an industry-wide WhatsApp group in which fashion’s most influential plot which trends to adopt and which not to (how good would that be?), it is in fact down to far more rational reasons.

Gucci, as you may have heard, is having a bit of a moment. Since the appointment of its creative director, Alessandro Michele, last year, the superbrand has enjoyed a new lease of life.

Along with an affinity with the eccentric, the androgynous and the OTT, Michele also has a penchant for dusting off forgotten items from the brand’s iconic archive and reminding us why they were brilliant.

Along with the double-GG monogrammed bags and classic red- stripe belts, his talent for taking the obscure and making it relevant again also saw the horsebit loafer gain renewed appeal some 60 years after it first arrived on the scene.

For Michele’s debut last autumn, a slip-on, kangaroo-fur-lined loafer - a version designed with the style set (not the jet set) in mind - became the surprise hit of the season. This spring it seems that the Gucci loafer love-in has spread to classic styles as well.

Among those currently doing the fashion week circuit, backless options are proving a popular choice, particularly with those who weren’t quick enough to nab the fur-lined versions, while the street style-oriented are embracing bold colours and snazzy prints - see Singapore-based fashion blogger turned designer Yoyo Cao, who matched her gingham Gucci loafers to her checked shirt in Milan.

But for those looking for a timeless investment to see them through next season/the rest of their lives, there can be no substitute for a pair in classic black. The old ones are always the best.

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