Assuming you weren’t distracted by her Maryam Keyhani hat, you likely spied them in the snaps of Sarah Jessica Parker filming scenes for the forthcoming season of And Just Like That: those sensible, faintly chunky clogs peeping from beneath her vintage Ossie Clark dress. In fact, Parker’s character Carrie Bradshaw has almost (I said almost!) as much history with Scholl’s Pescura clog as she does her Manolo Blahniks. Getting the perma-heeled Bradshaw into Birkenstocks required a hip surgery storyline in season one of the Sex and the City reboot, but she was wearing Scholl sandals way back in the mists of time—or at least, 2002–in the original series.
Perhaps it’s the shoe’s inherent nostalgia that prompted the character to make space in her closet amongst all those “hello, lover” heels. We know that Carrie is sentimental when it comes to clothes, and women have been wearing this brand since 1907, when a Midwestern podiatrist named William Mathias Scholl founded the Scholl Manufacturing Company with the mission of producing shoes designed to promote foot health.
Scholl’s master stroke, the Pescura clog–with its curved footbed that allows the big toe to rest flat while the other four toes relax–came along in 1956, and was soon adopted by the likes of Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and Audrey Hepburn. In the 1960s, it became associated with a generation of politically engaged, anti-war young people preoccupied by sexual freedom and civil rights. Still emblematic of the Summer of Love, Scholl’s clog is an instant route to the boho chic mood that fashion can never fully quit.
The 25-year-old Chanel muse Lily-Rose Depp has been wearing Scholl’s orthopedically-inclined clogs ever since she first stepped outside the shadow of her famous parents, and designer brands have taken note of its timeless appeal, too, with Re/Done and more recently, Philosophy di Lorenzo Serafini among those giving the functional footwear a luxe glow-up.
And while this is set to be the summer of the brat (who would doubtless take a Marc Jacobs Kiki boot or Balenciaga heel over anything as granola-ish as a Scholl), the rise of Chloé’s monster wedge, and the fact that Sienna Miller is once again inseparable from her clogs, suggests there’ll be room for some boho spirit, too.