The dandy is dead, announces a report from The New York Times. It explains why:  “We are entering the age of fugly.”

Fugly, of course, means  very ugly with an ironic edge, that questions the aesthetic of beauty, but in the context of clothing and accessories, the “f” could also mean “fashion”. Which, especially in menswear, is changing radically in favour of the awkward, the bulky, the “fugly”.

It has been around for some time. A year ago, Balenciaga’s Triple S, a $895 sneaker with “a stacked, wave-form sole bulging in every direction” turned out so unlovely that it apparently “induced near fatal apoplexy in the American designer Ralph Rucci”, who champions elegance, reports NYT. He is still recovering, and has called the design a manifestation of greed and mediocrity, but Balenciaga has not only seen a boost in sale but has also boosted the trend.  

Vogue, in the meantime, has asked: “Has Dsquared2 Created the Fugliest Shoe of All Time?”

“In the pantheon of ugly shoes, only one can be the ugliest. Balenciaga made a valiant effort with the Triple S sneaker. Gucci has a new bejeweled hiking boot that’s a bit Barney goes to Amangiri. Louis Vuitton’s got the Archlight sneaker…It seemed like we had finally reached the teleological end of the ugly shoe trend—and then came Dsquared2,” says the article at www.vogue.com.

“It’s like a fantastically fugly collage of all the sneaker trends of the moment hot-glued into a wedge sandal with a little strap of PVC for extra zeitgeist-y appeal. It is everything and nothing, perhaps the trendiest shoe to ever be and the most hideous assertion of crowdsourced capitalism.” 

There is something lovely in fashion that is free of the notion of beauty. It can be a satire, or just fun. But how much do you pay for a joke?