By Gordon Hughes
Now that it’s warming up I’ve been able to sit outdoors on one of the benches at Cafe Panino Mucho Gusto. While sipping a cup of joe the other morning, I was overwhelmed by the number of sneakers with white soles passing by.
What is up with this ubiquitous trend?
It is not just the West Village, it is all of Manhattan, not only Manhattan I was just out in La Jolla, Palm Springs and Los Angeles last week and those shoes are everywhere.
Both men and women wearing them.
I was on the subway this morning, now I don’t know how many people a subway car holds, but as I counted, over 80 percent of the riders were wearing white-soled shoes.
So now here is what I really find interesting; as I am now fixated on this fashion trend, I stand in front of the Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker and see tons of these white-soled shoes.
There are attractive women and rakishly handsome men all speaking Italian wearing what appear to be extremely expensive white-soled shoes. I mean fine leather tops with white soles. There are French, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, all with the ultra experience versions. Then there are the Russian copycats. Need I say more? Poor Russians they never seem to get fashion right. I mean the soles are white, but the tops look like cardboard. Meanwhile over on Hudson there are plastic bottle guys wearing, you guessed it, white-soled shoes. Young girls, old men, short buzz cut hair, baseball cap wearing boys and girls, straight, gay, big, small, athletic, non-athletic well you get the picture.
My head is spinning. So meanwhile back on the bench at Panino Mucho Gusto, I look down at my sneakers, which I had just bought last week and OMG the soles are, you guessed it, WHITE.
