Flowery Vegetarian Dr Martens
As a goth in the 80s, if I wasn’t wearing black pointy boots with silver skulls for buckles, I wore black Dr Martens. As I became less goth and more indie, I progressed from black and introduced some colour into my wardrobe (only red and purple though, to be honest), which filtered down into my footwear. I had black docs, red docs, red and black docs, silver docs, purple docs and – my favourite ever – bright orange docs.
When I stopped wearing leather, I stopped buying DMs. Vegetarian Shoes in Brighton sold vegetarian ones but they were out of my budget at the time. I started wearing Converse and now have a collection of colours that puts my old DM collection to shame. I’d sort of forgotten about DMs until Cloggs got in touch and asked me to have a look at their website. As they had a Dr Martens category, I thought I’d have a nose for a bit of nostalgia, then saw these beauties.
The blurb said they were canvas. Eh? Canvas? VEGETARIAN FLOWERY DR MARTENS? I wouldn’t have been seen dead in flowers when I was a goth (actually, that’s not true – a goth would have loved to have been seen dead. That was kind of the point. They just wouldn’t want to be seen wearing flowery shoes.) But I’m no longer a goth and can wear flowers if I want to. So I ordered them and they arrived the next day.
They fit perfectly with plenty of room for my toes but although they’re canvas, they’re just as stiff as I remember leather docs being and will take some breaking in.
Pretty pretty pretty shoes.