Isn't it fun that white sneakers are finally the RAGE in Europe?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/fa...ml?ref=fashion

Having just returned from Venice and Milan, I was struck by the amount of white I saw near the ground. Perhaps that awful taxi strike forced more sneaker-wearing people onto the streets. Is it possible American tourists (or a steady lack of them) have had their impact on European fashion trends?

Blinding canary yellow sneakers were popular in Venice's fashion windows and on the feet of younger Italians during the Architecture Biennale opening. Italians tend to love their yellow/black combinations, but yellow is a bit too Donatella for me.

Nike opened a large store just before you step onto the Ponte della Costituzione. A lot of taxi drivers in Venice are wearing white Nike sneakers these days. You can spot the Nike logo a mile away.

Does this mean criticizing the American tourist who loves his/her white sneakers is over?

The only people criticising Americans for their clothing and footwear are other Americans. Europeans couldn't care less what you wear when in Europe.

It only took reverse snobbery about 40 years to occur.

I've started packing fr our two weeks in Europe. Amongst other things I am taking are 3/4 shorts and a couple pair of Pumas. If I don't return it means I got run over by some clothing-insecure tourist from the US I suppose.

Damn, I bought a pair of black sneakers specifically for walking around London in April, Spain in May and now France in July. I bought them so I'd only tick 5 of the 10 'annoying American tourist' boxes instead of 6.

I'm always out of fashion!

What puzzles me is how they keep them white. When I were a lad, we put liquid called Blanko on our white gym shoes and left them on the windowsill to dry .

Dukey, lol.

I will point out that there was a time when a *specific kind* of white sneaker was out of fashion among the cognoscenti but still popular with middle-of-the-road Americans (perhaps others, too, I don't know). Hence, the stigma.

I don't think the white Superga--a kind of canvas sneaker, similar to Tretorn or Jack Purcell--ever really went all the way out, nor did the big white sneakers, like Air Jordans, that some rappers wear. Unless you're not a rapper.

Which brings me to my point: when we are tourists, we look like tourists, and no amount of fashion advice will change that. We all do our best, but in the end, to quote Popeye, I yam what I yam.

I've got news for you as I have been travelling to Venice and Rome for years and I can't tell the American teenagers from their Italian, German, Dutch, French counterparts.

Top Shop, Zara, A/F, Hollister, Gap, Nike, Lacoste, are global brands.

French tourists walk around Rittenhouse Square wearing hoodies, Chicago Bulls hats, and I phones.

I have also noticed that the guys who work the supply boats in Venice like Nike trainers.

See you at a beccafico in Campo San
Stefano!

Thin

"Isn't it fun that white sneakers are finally the RAGE in Europe?"

Finally? My son has been wearing white sneakers since he was a teenager - and he is 32.

I wonder: is there a French language equivalent of this board somewhere, on which French tourists bound for the US inquire anxiously about footwear? Do German tourists headed for New York ask whether shorts would be appropriate?

Is fashion anxiety universal among travelers?

Of course there is always the differences in hair styles, belts, watches, eye glasses, bags, shirts, sweaters, and pants that are not jeans.

This is no news; someone has just noticed.

My Italian husband has been wearing white trainers for over 15 years. Before we were married, when he came to visit me in the US once, one of his friends asked him to pick up a specific brand of white running shoes.

I've never liked white shoes, specifically because they get soiled so easily, but for several years, dark colored athletic shoes were impossible to find here in Italy. This year, I finally found a pair of black trainers.

Where I live, teenaged girls are all wearing brightly colored hi-tops, the old-fashioned basketball shoe (with no high-tech features).

Since white sneakers have been popular for decades in Europe, it is more likely that some of the American fashion writers have finally wiped the sh*t out of their eyes.

When I learned that just across the border in Mexico the locals call the tourists "Q-Tips" for our white hair and shoes, I resolved to wear only black trainers.

<it is more likely that some of the American fashion writers have finally wiped the sh*t out of their eyes.>
So when will assuming that all Americans are stupid and inferior to Europeans go out of style? Ironically, this is exactly the attitude that provokes anxiety in insecure Americans traveling abroad.

Are American fashion writers the majority in the country? Wow, that really would make the country inferior. But hey, if you think that American fashion writers for the NYT are the kings of the world, more power to you, and be sure to dress exactly how they say you should!

Frankly, I think that normal American people have more sense about how to dress, but you are free to disagree.

<Are American fashion writers the majority in the country? >
Huh??
<if you think that American fashion writers for the NYT are the kings of the world>
Where did I say that?

What a silly rude person!

Would this be considered Normcore?

Wrong!

I talk to people about travel to Europe and Asia all the time.

The vast majority of people who are insecure about travelling abroad feel so because they don't speak a foreign language and they are confused about
currency.

I have never had anyone tell me they were nervous about travelling to Istanbul because they didn't know what shoes to wear.


Thin

NYC-FS, what was your impression of the Arch Biennale? Did you find it stimulating, or maybe a bit opaque.

I liked a couple of exhibitions running in parallel with the Biennale, art works at the Olivetti, works by contemporaries of Carlo Scarpa, and also an exhibition at the Querini Stampalia, sketches and construction drawing by Scarpa. Those drawings allow you to get inside his head a bit.

I found the German pavilion completely un-understandable. France was good, quite self-critical, the history of the concentration camp just outside Paris. Full scale construction of one of Le Corb's designs was good.