Crep Check

In the early fall of 2023, I traveled back to London after being away—mostly in New York—for most of one year. And right on arrival, when I emerged from the tube station close to where I live in the early morning of a late September day, the first thing I noticed was that everyone around me, regardless of age, gender, or any other visible trait, appeared to be wearing almost identical, brand-new shoes—more than brand new, box-fresh, as they say over there. Yet conspicuously, and incongruously, as all such shoes looked like old Adidas sneakers. As I was myself wearing a pair of tired Adidas NMDs—which were old, and looked old—I was intrigued, and looked closer. Those were no NMDs, nor even trusty Stan Smiths (of which I have owned a functioning pair, without interruption, since I bought my first, around 1979). What I was witness to was an entirely new phenomenon, as sudden as it was inexplicable. After a more careful perusal of the floorscapes of Bloomsbury, Marylebone, and Clerkenwell in the days that followed, I came to the conclusion that the entire populatio…