A Sneaker Rises Again (But Not to Haunt Me)

I have terrible memories of sneaker hunting when I was in the 6th grade. My mother had the brilliant idea to pre-select a pair of running sneakers for me at Lipkind's, a former shoe store in the Bronx and told my brother to take me to fit them on. So in I walk expecting to see a cool pair of Nike or Puma trainers and out walks a salesman toting a pair of cement grey and varicose vein blue Jox. Oh the horror! My brother still remarks about the look of bewilderment that was on my face to this day. It makes me wonder what happened to all those shoes once familiar from my childhood that have now seemed to, like phone booths and VCR's, disappear off the face of the earth.

Several of my childhood faves are still around thankfully and a few are not lest I be thrust into immediate therapy. However, there's one brand I remember wearing during one of my high school summers that was "the" shoe to rock with no socks and your 'too short to be high-water pants but too long to be a normal short' shorts. Oh yes ladies and gentlemen, the summer of 1992 was the year that to look 'high school cool' in NYC you had to rock your pair of slip-n Keds.

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*In-stores and on Keds.com now

No bad memory here and I am not bemoaning about having worn them. There was something clean and simple to this classic All-American brand then that still exists today. And unlike the other childhood brands now defunct, Keds is still going strong. The classic timeless appeal of Keds is their strongest selling point since they are free from too many spur of the moment, trend-humping bells and whistles. This is a good look to support to resurgence of the clean well-dressed menswear revival. For Spring 2012 the brand continues with their classic easy to wear, 'slice of American pie' shapes in fabrics that speak to a generation that knows the name and a generation that craves the cool. The fabrics are preppy familiar, a tinge cheeky and a dash of the eccentric but still utterly wearable and can be integrated into many facets of a man's preexisting wardrobe.

What's interesting is that although Keds has introduced updated fabrics and styles like the Booster and a suede chukka, the slip-on style has not changed since I wore them all over the Bronx some years ago. Fashion is truly cyclical and in the case of Keds, cyclical and then some.

Let your Keds speak to you at Keds.com and at a Bloomingdales store near you.

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