Dear reader, I have big feet. They’re somewhere between US size 12 and 13, depending on the brand, and they’re just large enough to make a lot of classic styles look like absolute trash (at a certain point the proportions become weird and clown-like). But having big feet was more of a problem when I was a kid. Taking my older brother’s hand-me-downs wasn’t an option – his feet topped out at a sensible size 9 when mine were already breaking double digits – so my parents would take me shoe-shopping as often as practicable.
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Forget Hush Puppies and Clarks, companeros. My parents worked hard and gave me many opportunities growing up, but dropping beaucoup bucks on a pair of basic black shoes which would only fit for a few months wasn’t always possible. I spent many a weekday afternoon in the musty back corners of shopping centres, trying on non-descript options at discount shoe stores. That trend continued until I found a pair of nearly-new Dr. Martens in my size at an op-shop. It also instilled in me a weird defensiveness of those suburban nooks and their cut-price options.
All of this is to say Payless‘ latest campaign in the United States feels like vindication – proof that just because you could see the weird rubber latticework through my rapidly-fading outsoles, my kicks were just as good as anyone else’s.
The American discount shoe merchants recently set-up a high-end shopfront in Los Angeles called Palessi, and stocked it with many of the heels, sneakers, and flats found in regular stores around the nation. The catch: they invited a bucketload of social media influencers to the launch, and asked them exactly what they thought about those ‘Palessi’ wares.
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Of course, those punters bloody loved them. Stripped of the connotations of Payless as just another brand aimed at everyday consumers, those glammed-up folks said they would pay hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for kicks which cost just a fraction of the estimated price. According to AdWeek, one woman even dropped $873 on a pair of boots – an 1800% markup.
Everyone who threw cash at Payless was refunded, but I am absolutely cherishing the refutation of bougie value-judgments on display in the experiment. Let me have this. After all, I live with the knowledge that I make the classic Chuck Taylor All Star resemble some kind of flipper, and that I could probably make a pair of box-fresh Common Projects look like garbage, too.
