This Destroyed Dr Martens Shoe Is a Stealth Raf Simons Revival
It's very difficult to grasp the scale of something until you get some distance from it. Even three or four years since Raf Simons shuttered his eponymous label, menswear is still reeling from its influence. It's not always obvious but, if you know where to look, the signs are there.
Dr Martens' latest shoes are one such example, as they're a quite overt homage to Simons' lingering relevance.
The humbly named Dr Martens 1461 MT (cut from similarly evocative "Wyoming" leather) does not make its place in the Raf Simons canon obvious. But you don't have to be a Simons scholar to get why it's so odd.
We're talking about a pretty classic Dr Martens derby down to the yellow-stitched sole, whose upper is tinged with silver and whose toe is, more importantly, shredded to reveal steel inside. This is not a work shoe, though, as indicated by the "NOT SAFETY FOOTWEAR" warning on the insole.
Now, dare to compare these $200 shoes to Simons' Fall/Winter 2019 Dr Martens shoes.
One of Simons' more memorable and otherwise infrequent Dr Martens collaborations, the "Kreaton" shoes eschewed the yellow stitching down below and the silver treatment up top but otherwise look like blood relatives of the new Dr Martens silhouette, thanks primarily to a large chunk removed from the toe that reveals, again, a steel toe.
Though Simons' shoes are more aggro in their ripping and include branding jargon on the exposed metal, the design is pretty one to one. There's even a matching warning on the insole about them being not safety shoes. Fashion, not function.
See this less like a case of Dr Martens lifting from itself and more like it not letting a good idea go to waste. The Raf Simons Dr Martens shoes were, frankly, underrated in their day and it feels about time to walk it back, in steel-toed non-safety shoes, no less.
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