Musezine

Clog Girl Summer

Hot girl summer. Rat girl summer. Feral girl summer. White boy summer. Brat summer. We measure our years in summers, believing that each three-month stretch will signal something vague but important about the culture at large. In recent years: the return of the lanky white boy à la Timmy Chalamet and Josh O’Connor; the slim-thicc to thicc hot girl who dances on cars; the return of the 90s anorexic who eats girl dinner and doesn’t shower; the return of the indie sleaze hot girl who doesn’t eat at all, drinks copiously, and doesn’t wear a bra. High art concepts, some would say. I agree.

What else do we have to live for if not a themed summer? If we want to believe that we’re so back, then we need to worship totally normal things, like going braless and finding a skinny white boy attractive. This is how life takes on meaning now. Skipping breakfast is not a sign of disordered eating – it is chic. Not changing your bedsheets for four to five weeks is not poor hygiene. No, no. It is feral. ‘Kamala is brat’, a quip that actually means nothing, instead means everything.

But are we not bored?

Who will remember ‘Kamala is brat’ in ten years? Who will remember falling out of a coconut tree? A new meme cycle, a new kind of summer - although not yet apparent this year – will replace coconut tree x 360 mashup. Brat summer is simultaneously over and not over. What are we meant to do with this information? Everybody (nobody) is asking: WHAT WILL THIS SUMMER BE?

What of a summer that echoes all the summers past and future? What of a summer that taps into the tried-and-tested past and looks towards a brighter tomorrow? How about we have a kind of summer mentality that is easy to explain to your parents and doesn’t make you sound low IQ?

I will not suggest and end to a themed summer because, as I’ve already outlined, this is all we have to live for now. Instead, I put forward a clog girl summer. This is a girl who wears clogs. I do not need to over-explain how what you wear signifies something about your interiority and attitude. Let me, however, explain what a clog girl summer signals.

The rise of the clog has not gone unnoticed. Birkenstocks have been selling out. There is a Vogue article dedicated to Emily Ratajkowski’s Gucci clogs in Cannes. Hello! magazine is ‘obsessed’ with Jennifer Garner’s ‘clogs and socks combo for summer’. SJP shot a campaign for those heinous platform Ugg clogs. Gigi Hadid has been wearing clogs since forever.

It’s important to note, however, that neither Birks or Emily Ratajkowski are stylish. They are inoffensive, sure, but neither the shoe nor the person is doing anything interesting. Gigi has never really dressed well, and the Birks are the final nail in the style coffin. EmRata is still cutting about in the same boxy silhouettes while the rest of the world has moved on. Birks are not bad but should certainly not be relied on to carry an outfit.

I look towards a clog that has more to offer. Let us try a little harder. The real clog girl has not given up. She is an optimist. She wears leather mules with a wooden sole that clomps when she walks, rather than a cork or plastic Birk that slaps the ground weakly. Her step reverberates with intention. She does not just fling something on for ease and comfort; she makes the decision to look a certain way. She is life-affirming. A selection of suitably sexy clogs can be seen below:

Other than making impractical footwear choices, what else does the clog girl have to offer? How can her philosophy guide us this summer?

Note the clog’s mountainous wooden sole, its curves and undulations mimicking the silhouette of black hills against a setting sun. So that when the clog girl walks, she moves with this image in mind: she takes the ups and downs well in her stride, understanding that they are natural and thus perfect. She is a breath of fresh air. She chooses to live.

The clog girl can only walk with purpose; her clogs prevent her from skipping. She departs from the tyranny of the ballet flat over the last few years, which, combined with the dainty mary jane, convinced us to tread lightly over the earth. We were asked to be fragile in our movements, neurotic. We could not disturb.

The clog girl is not a neurotic. She is not a neurotic-anorexic, like the ballet flat wearer. She does not pretend to be Dasha Nekrasova and she does not try to be -core. She is measured. She looks down to the ground and up into the sky equally.

She looks to replicate her clog-wearing ancestors, those smooth-skinned and wide-eyed maids in Dutch Masters paintings. Serene and sincere expressions with a hint of mirth. She captures the Dutch tradition of hedonism balanced with stillness and repression. She is Johannes Vermeer and Jan Steen at once. She is tapped into those ancient rhythms of clomping about the garden (see the onomatopoeic Dutch term for clogs: klompen) and throwing back beer and, by doing so, realises her own simultaneous significance and insignificance. She smokes and drinks like her ancestors, sometimes to excess, sometimes not. She understands that all these things are gifts.

The point being that the clog girl does not think all too much. She feels. She understands neurosis is a curse that must be broken. She does everything she wants and lives by her desires. She is a complete bitch but also likeable. She avoids projection (lmao). She straddles nature and culture which means that she is, in Paglian terms, sexy. She is not brat but not not brat. She sees things for how they are, making her an essential optimist. She is post-postness. Rather, she is here and now.

Addison Rae’s music video for Headphones On is a stellar example of clog girl summer. Watch her be playful and roll around the Icelandic mountains. Nature meets culture. A heinous pink wig against the beautiful green of earth. Addison is not dainty or fragile, nor does she stomp about and demand to be seen. She is somewhere in-between. She is past, present and future. She is intuitive and sings in her breathy tone: ‘Every good thing comes my way.’

Such is the mantra of clog girl summer. Be optimistic and accept the good. Grow up.

- I 27 May 2025