As fashion’s obsession with workwear marches on, the style-obsessed among us are looking in increasingly unusual directions to find inspiration.
We have mined kitchen-wear for nearly all its worth, courtesy of The Bear and all its stylish, shouty chefs. The painters and labourers have had their Carhartt and Dickies usurped, the hikers have had their boots and trainers pinched, and the fisherman have watched as their vests became fashion bait.
Now, style’s ever-searching eye has landed upon the gardeners. In great news for your grandma: the gardening clog has just become the most stylish silhouette of 2025.
Shoe brands everywhere are pedalling variations on the simple gardening clog, with its rounded, rubber exterior and slip-on functionality.
The cult shoe in New York right now — if you can believe it — is a pair of gardening clogs by French brand Plasticana. The Plasticana Gardana clog, made from hemp-plastic, was described by one New Yorker to GQ as “the ‘I live in Brooklyn’ shoes.”
They were never designed to be a viral shoe. They are brown, and speckled, and unremarkable. No new Plasticana styles have been released since 2009. The brand Plasticana doesn’t even have a proper Instagram account. But the clog has New York in a total chokehold, and it’s only time until clogmania spills over into London — in one way or another.
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The ultimate celebrity seal of clog-approval came from Bella Hadid last October. Preparing to pump her gas, the model stepped out in a distinctly off-duty model look, that only an off-duty model could pull off at a service station: tiny white shorts, a white vest, an oversized leather jacket and some suspect shoes.
Bella’s clog of choice is the Proenza Schouler x Sorel Caribou rubber mule. If you recognise the name Sorel, that’s probably because they made your dad’s favourite pair of hiking boots.
But with the increased interest in gorpcore, workwear and practical shoes, high fashion brands are crawling towards functional footwear makers in search of collaborations. And it’s working.
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Merrell, another brand best known for servicing your older family members’ soles, recently collaborated with London-based brand YMC to create a version of Merrell’s extremely popular Moab Slide 2. Made with brushed leather and a leather footbed, the YMC x Merrell Moab Slide 2 is the natural evolution of the Birkenstock Boston Clog. Just even... cloggier.
They also collaborated with skate brand Dime to release a particularly sneaker-esque slip-on clog back in November. Despite looking like the kind of thing a pensioner would pop on before heading to Tesco, the shoe was modelled on a red carpet, a nod to its strangely fashionable appeal.
And where there are clogs, there are Crocs. The notoriously ugly footwear brand is successfully riding the clog wave, with a 20 per cent leap in stock this February after it reported higher than expected revenue.
Back in February, Meghan Markle donned a pair of Crocs Dylan clogs during an episode of her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, prompting a 60 per cent surge in on-site Dylan sales.
Birkenstock is equally leaning into the horticultural side of things, branching out from their hit suede Boston clog to a more rubber-y alternative called the “Birki Flow”.
But can a clog successfully replace the long-reigning trainer as shoe of the summer? Brands are certainly preparing for it to, with gorpcore trainer giants Salomon diversifying into slip on silhouettes, along with brands like Puma, Hoka, and Asics.
There’s one thing for sure this summer: whatever shoe you invest in, it better not have laces.
