. . . on getting the boot in
BOUNCING SOULS. There are not enough of them around at the moment. Bouncing soles, the Doc Marten variety, are everywhere though. In my day it was the footwear of choice for disaffected youth, from the diehard punks to those white-faced hordes of Cureheads outside HMV. And now? A 10-year-old acquaintance of mine wears them. So does her 40-something mother.
I don’t think Cureheads exist any more and the once counter-cultural DM has been mainstream for years. For some, the beginning of the end was the introduction of side zips, rendering the laborious laces merely decorative. I thought of them quite a bit recently while on a hunt for the perfect winter boot. Personal austerity measures mean a lot more research goes into finding footwear these days. Mostly the process was a frustrating trawl through the unsuitable, the uncomfortable and the underwhelming.
Spring might seem like a strange time to go looking for winter boots but they are on sale in a lot of places, if you are not picky about having boots several seasons out of date. Shoe boots. Wedge boots. Knee-high. Ankle. And spring is actually a fine time to go winter-boot shopping if you are, like me, the kind of oddball who wears them all year round. Give me a stout boot over a dainty shoe anytime, whatever the weather.
Being more careful with my money, I didn’t splurge on the first fancy boot that caught my eye. For once there was a long list of criteria as opposed to, do they fit and do they make me look taller? I wanted a boot that would last. I wanted a boot with stature. I wanted comfort. I wanted boots that didn’t make me topple over. (I’ve fallen off many a boot in my time.) I wanted a boot that could take me from work to a party to a stroll in the park.
While trying to squeeze into one awkwardly designed pair, I thought of DMs because they were hands down, feet up, the most comfortable boots I ever owned. I had two pairs, both of them eight-holed because I wasn’t cool enough to have carried off the 10-hole never mind the 14. The first pair I bought from the late, great Peggy, who sold Docs to the whole of Dublin and beyond from a stall behind the Ilac Centre. The second pair were given to me by an ex. We were broke; he saved up for months and then hid them in their box under the duvet. It remains one of the best presents I’ve ever received.
I have a friend who, even though she hasn’t worn them for years, epitomised the allure of the Doc. She teamed her 10-holes with homemade dresses and satin corsets so the clumpy boots offered a masculine contrast to her gothic-princess ensemble. She remembers meeting a boy she will only call “the king of the Cureheads” in Bartley Dunne’s once, wearing a brand new pair. Over a drink – cider with Pernod and blackcurrant, obviously – it dawned on her that the boots were far too shiny and new looking to be taken seriously. She was mortified until the gallant king did her the honour of kicking the boots up and down Grafton Street, scuffing them up beautifully.
But what happens with Docs is that one day you wake up and realise, unless you are lucky enough to be employed in an indie record store, that rebel-rousing boots aren’t going to work for you any more. Your boots get civilised. They start to feature wedge heels and shiny zips and elasticated pull-up designs. You start to choose business-style boots instead of boots that look the business. My friend, once white-faced, scarlet-lipped and trussed up in satin corsets, now wears MBT boots.
It comes to us all. But perhaps it doesn’t have to. I was nearly giving up my search for the perfect boot when, in the corner of the shop, I gravitated toward the Doc Marten display. And there they were. They had the distinctive air-cushioned sole. Some neat, brogue-style indentation. And – the shock of it – high heels. High-heeled docs. An outrageous travesty, some say. The perfect winter boot, say I. They weren’t cheap but I reckon I will get a few years out of them and the best bit is that they are the most comfortable pair of boots I’ve had since the last Docs I owned.
I can’t believe I am walking around in Docs again. I look at them on my bedroom floor and smile just at the sight of them. I don’t care if they have zips down the side so that I don’t have to do up the laces. They speak to my inner teenager, the one who skipped down Grafton Street but never quite had the courage to hang around outside HMV.
The high, Victoriana-inspired heel tells the world that I’ve grown up. The black and yellow “bouncing soles” Airwaves tag says “but not that much”.
