Hipster Fashion Prediction: Saddle Shoes

The New Wave of the Future-Past.

Here's one: at the end of this past September, I had a crystal clear vision of yet another hipster fashion trend to come: saddle shoes. However, because I am lazy (or is it just typical hipster indifference?), my prediction post went unwritten, and according to Hard Liquor, Soft Holes, it seems I have been scooped. Curses!

(Just so you know, I was hep to this groove, man--and I had a timestamp to prove it. Now I'm the last one to leave the party, just like Pauly Shore.)

However, despite my tardiness, I still maintain that over the coming months, saddle shoes will become even more prominent in hipster populations. First and foremost, there is the huge (huge!!) nostalgia factor--everything old is new again (see: USB mixtapes, Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Reebok high tops). For those of us who weren't lucky enough to have them the first time around, owning saddle shoes as an adult can be perceived as ironic (though is that in the standard way or the Alanis Morrissette way? I can never tell): this particular footwear epitomizes youth culture--not only in the classic 1950s, rosy-cheeked, sock hop sort of way, but also in the more accessible "the identical twins in my fifth grade class each had a pair of these but I never did and I was SO. JEALOUS." way that is so very integral to hipsterdom today.

On a more practical level, however, saddle shoes are totally the perfect accessory to your (sub)urban lifestyle. Not only does their supple and durable leather mean that you're completely protected from even the most perilous of PBR spills, but you're also ready to take it to the bowling alley at any given moment (even if it's only the Wii version). And finally, what better way to concretize that old-tymey spirit than with a shoe that is so comfortable, you'll be able to trudge through waist-deep snow, uphill both ways--at the peril of being consumed by brontosauri and T. rexes--just to get to school and earn that education!

So, all you hipsters, because I'm late on this one, the next time I go tromping about the Burg, I expect that you'll all be decked out in your finest saddle shoes and I'll do some recruiting for my new gang. But you'd better get your applications in early because word on the street is we're getting Members Only jackets next year. You heard it here first.