On Easter Sunday, the Reverend Andrew Dotchin was prevented from entering The Wine Bar on Tacket Street, Ipswich, by a doorman on account of the fact that he was wearing sandals and no socks. This was a health-and-safety diktat, as apparently wearing sandals without socks slightly heightens your risk of hurting your feet. But then there are many ways to hurt yourself in a pub, both physically and emotionally. Even if you’re wearing socks. For instance, somebody might rip one of them off, fill it with a snooker ball and then clobber you with it.
So first they ban smoking in pubs, and now vicars in sandals. Where will this madness end? Once Our Lord turned water into wine, and asked us to drink it; now our clergy are turned away from wine bars in case they bloody themselves. “We were stopped dead,” recounted the reverend, evoking the spirit of Easter: “‘sorry, we don’t let sandals in here.’”
The thing is, though, sandals are having something of a moment and we must not allow the austere, puritanical instincts of one East Anglian wine-bar proprietor to drag us backwards into a mollycoddling revival of the Vestments Controversy of 16th-century England.
A decade ago, Pope Benedict XVI was roundly mocked because of a rumour that his scarlet leather loafers were made by Prada, and so these crimson slippers became a much-derided symbol of his grotesque vanity and indulgence; first the Hitler Youth, now a pair of Pradas! Until it turned out that the Pope’s shoes were just handmade by a north Italian shoemaker. Furthermore, if we look at Prada’s spring/summer 15 menswear show, we will find it’s actually full of the sort of cross-strapped sandals favoured by the Rev Dotchin. Worn, of course, without any socks.
So the first rule of wearing sandals is not to wear any socks with them. This far lessens the probability of catching a fungal infection, or just stinking awfully, in the warm weather. Even our sock-crazed mate at Sock Club London agrees: “Socks and open-toed sandals, reminiscent of how my father used to dress, should be shunned.”
Second, your sandals should be simple, and relaxing to wear. Many say Birkenstocks are the most comfortable shoes in the world, and that’s how sandals should be; a sensuous underworld of affordable orthopaedic pleasure, rather than an extravagant style statement.
But, third, if you have to make an extravagant style statement, there are more designer sandals out this summer than ever: Y-3 offers colourful, hi-tech sporty sandals, Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci has its own baroque take on the Birkenstock, and Adidas by Raf Simons is hawking pool sliders.
“Socks,” joked the Rev Dotchin, “are an instrument of Satan. If you look at any pictures of stained glass windows, look at the toes – no one in heaven is wearing socks.” He also cited Mark 6:9, in which Jesus instructs his disciples: “But be shod with sandals: and not put on two coats.” Thousands of years later, this is still excellent advice.
Other examples of men who wear the style well – more subversive, strangely decadent men – are David Beckham with his shiny leather sandals and sarong, and Marc Jacobs striding down the catwalk after a show in complicated sandals and silky pyjamas. But there is one example that stands above all others: Albert Einstein.
Many of us will have heard of Einstein on the Beach, the experimental opera in four acts composed by Philip Glass. Fewer, however, will have seen the above photograph of Einstein on the beach taken while he was holidaying on Long Island in the summer of 1939 – the same summer that he wrote to President Roosevelt about the possibility of an atomic bomb – as he lounges around in a pair of oddly feminine sandals purchased from Rothman’s Department Store and contemplates the apocalypse.
From Ancient Greek symposia to the present day, many of our greatest philosophers, religious leaders and scientists have worn sandals. And if they’re not allowed into The Wine Bar on Tacket Street, well, no matter.
