I'm a New Englander. You can tell. I don't have the Southern charm (read: accent). I harass people when they claim to be cold. I call Manhattan "The City," regardless of who I'm talking to. Before I came to Duke, I'd lived in Connecticut all my life. And as a New Englander, from the heart of a state that relies on this broader identity for the bulk of its own character, I went through the typical rites of our coastal culture in high school.
Chief among these milestones: purchasing my first pair of boat shoes.
When I first started sporting the shoes back home, a few old friends hassled me for what they saw as succumbing to the influence of my classmates (I went to a local Jesuit school named Fairfield Prep. Yeah, I know). And during fraternity rush my freshman year, I was playing pool when a Durham resident came up to me, took in my appearance-I was wearing my boat shoes, brown corduroys, a pastel green button-down and Wayfarer imitations in my pocket-and successfully guessed my home state.
Before we continue, a little background on boat shoes.
Paul Sperry-native of New Haven, Conn.-modeled the leather shoe after his dog's paws to increase traction on boat decks. The U.S. Navy eventually provided the shoes for its sailors, helping the style reach a wider audience. Soldiers then took them home, and they proved an ideal fit for the country-club style influenced by Dwight Eisenhower and favored by suburban family men.
Classic, nautical-oriented apparel received another boost from John F. Kennedy, whose Cape Cod manner of dress popularized loafers and shorts. It's been said frequently that American male fashion stems directly from the President, and Eisenhower and Kennedy are two of the most aggressive examples.
The trend manifested in northeastern boarding schools and the Ivy League, with which it became synonymous-Kennedy, after all, was an Ivy Leaguer. Prep as a coherent style originated in these centers of wealth and privilege.
The '80s saw prep rise as a nationally recognizable fashion, and around the same time boat shoes took their spot among pastels and croakies as go-to staples of the Southern Gentlemen, a delineation of this northeastern style carried southwards by WASPs and historic cultural migration. And in 2008, a New York Times article noted that colored Top-Siders had become, at least for a time, the Brooklyn hipster's footwear of choice.
A quick survey of people seated on the West Campus Plaza one bright, sunny, boat-shoe perfect afternoon asked respondents for the first word that comes to mind when they hear "boat shoes." Leading answers: "fratty" and "preppy." Another top contender: "douchebag." This leads one to believe that the style's value is certainly in the eye of the beholder. A number of students clarified that they had never seen the footwear before college, and a few associated the shoes directly with North Carolina and Duke.
Others thought immediately of their fathers; appropriate, as the polo-shirt, khaki pants, Brooks Brothers style frequently favored by fraternities has often been derided as a reactionary and old-fashioned manner of dress. It's all about timelessness, but if one's preferences never included the fashions, then it doesn't matter what time it is. A handful expressed more pointed evaluations: "awesome," "alpha-male," "ugly" and "snazzy."
The next leading responses were variations on sailor and fishing, a sign that not everyone has forgotten what boat shoes are actually for. Sperry invented his Top-Siders to be worn on boats; unless you're a fisherman, you're probably not hanging around on a deck (unless you have a yacht, in which case, you're loaded). If you're walking around wearing wrestling shoes, passerby can't be faulted for thinking you're a wrestler, and if you just removed your Titleist visor so that you can untuck your Augusta National polo from your Dockers and pull it over your head, don't be surprised when someone asks whether you just finished nine or 18.
This would only be so interesting if boat shoes were considered mere pieces of clothing, but their New England origins and Southern Genteel appropriation gives them a certain other... meaning; a broader sense of the wearer beyond the simple aesthetic of the apparel. Just ask Duke students.
Take a look around; better yet, look down at your own feet, because I'll bet you a jib that you're wearing Top-Siders right now. My two years at Duke have been filled with boat shoes, one of the only pieces of apparel that you can reliably expect to see on girls, guys, frat stars, Pratt stars, hipsters and line monitors.
The ubiquity of the style on campus is the exception to a number of typical clothing standards. They can be worn with shorts, khakis, jeans or semi-formal attire, with socks or barefoot, at the beach, in class, at Shooters, on a boat. And most interestingly, they are worn by everyone.
What merits interest is why so many students have chosen to sport Top-Siders, an item seemingly unconnected with Duke. Peer influence is certainly a key factor; it played its role in my purchase three years ago (that, and I've always thought JFK looked really, really cool). They're comfortable and versatile, yes, and they look good once you get used to them. But Duke is inland, in a blue state-how Southern can it be? And how many hundreds of miles away are Deerfield and Andover? How did boat shoes become the non-Blue Devil interest that we share most?
Students here come from such disparate backgrounds and so wide a geographical span that attempting to pinpoint any aspect of culture shared by one percent of the school, much less any sizeable proportion, seems like it would be impossible. And it is. But few items of taste-elements of personal preference that show an attraction to a particular style or brand-are as widely shared as boat shoes.
Well, Duke is often referred to as the Southern Ivy, particularly by those of us who like the idea. The student body here is well-populated by elite prep-school graduates, and while not an overriding force by any means, the group possesses enough cultural capital on campus to make a dissemination of their tastes all but unavoidable.
Although boat shoes may seem like a boundary-straddling statement-binding together Duke students with a shared style choice-they probably don't have any meaning here beyond their significance in the outside world. Those who came to school on Sperryed feet will leave the same way; others who might have picked up a pair over the four years could end up moving back West or to the cities, their Top-Siders relegated to a box in the closet.
But while a Blue Devil, it's easy enough to dress like other Blue Devils. Whether it stems from emulation of ritzy peers or merely from a chance purchase, a pledge-brother bonding event or a need to have proper footwear for sailing on a boat, face it: you'll probably get a pair.
They're great shoes.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.