Welcome to Is This Shoe OK?, an infrequent column about shoes that may or may not be good, as determined by me—an authority, because I own shoes—and you, in the comments below. In today’s installment, we’re looking at the Kentucky Fried Chicken Crocs collaboration featuring realistic-looking (and smelling!) fried chicken Jibbitz.
Ever so often, a shoe so heinous will pass by my inbox that I will start to fool myself into thinking it is good. I’m not so sure that’s what happened here with the Kentucky Fried Chicken x Crocs collaboration, but I’m also not not sure, either. In one of the more confounding meeting of minds this series has ever seen, Crocs has decided to challenge its public reputation as the ugly comfortable shoe preferred by the disgraced Mario Batali, gardeners, my mom, and people with disabilities for whom the foam clogs have been a godsend, to become an ugly-comfortable shoe schilling comfort food. That is, unless this was KFC’s idea. What came first, the chicken or the Croc?
According to Hypebeast, the shoe “features a white Croslite foam base complete with ventilation ports dressed in a fried chicken print… the iconic red and white stripes found on KFC buckets appears on the sole portion.” That’s all fine and good, if the wearer is comfortable reserving themselves to a reality where they stare at their feet and feel hunger. That seems like an okay existence. What is not okay are the fried chicken Jibbitz (small, collectable and wearable charms that fix onto the holes atop Crocs) which are made to “resemble and smell like fried chicken.” This shit is scented!
Now, if you have a foot odor problem, I could see these shoes being very okay even if they appear to be impossible to style—they’re a statement piece, and you can avoid emitting an off-putting stench. That is, unless the people around you hate the smell of fried chicken. For the rest of the population, the KFC Croc strikes me as being too much. I imagine the person buying these fashions himself a Jack Black-type, and that’s just too much energy for me to be around.
And yet… I still don’t totally hate the shoe? I think they are… not okay, but fine. According to the official Crocs website, these shoes are slated to hit the market in Spring 2020. No price has been listed, but if it’s like their other Crocs, I’m guessing they’ll be around $50? It’s really the timeline that makes me want to throw on a tinfoil hat—Spring 2020? Like, around April Fools Day? Will these shoes ever even exist? Is this just a very long and involved prank?
Enough from me. Now it is your turn to speak. What do you think, Jezebel commenters? Is this shoe OK? Is it unnecessarily contrarian to argue that these Crocs are, in fact, good? If you’re into them as a novelty, are you worried about isolating the vegetarians and vegans in your life? Do you agree with me in assuming that this may, in fact, be a long-tail April Fools Day joke? How do you really feel about the shoe? Remember, you’ve got an anonymous username to hide behind—be honest!