Some shoes arrive in a box. Wasted Paris’s new Wallabee arrives with the sort of evidence you find at the bottom of a drawer after a very good, very loud night: badges, a guitar pick, spare laces and a shoebox that looks as though it has been collecting references for years.
The collaboration with Clarks Originals takes the Wallabee Lite back through the objects orbiting Britpop, not just the sound. In black-on-black suede, the shoe looks almost restrained until the details come into focus. Tonal heraldic lions occupy the vamps. A branded pick hangs from a chain. Pins can be fixed to the sides like merch bought on the way out of a venue and worn before the night is over.
It is nostalgia with something to do. The buyer gets to decide how much of the story ends up on the shoe.
A campaign scene and the badge-covered Wallabee Lite. Campaign photography by Lucien Parsons; product image courtesy of Wasted Paris and Clarks Originals.
A shoe full of keepsakes
Wasted’s press notes place the Wallabee in the orbit of mid-to-late-’90s Britpop: pubs, indie venues, football terraces, backstage rooms, the pavement between them. That is the useful distinction here. This is not a costume built around one band. It is a collection of the small things people pin on, stuff in pockets and refuse to throw away.
The included set has nine badges and a metal Wasted pin. There are round tonal laces if subtlety is your business, flat blue ones if it isn’t, plus the guitar-pick charm and custom fob. The lion graphic is printed so dark against the suede that it reveals itself slowly. Close up, the restraint starts to look a little like a dare.
Underneath all that attitude, it remains a Wallabee: moccasin construction, soft suede and the familiar squared-off toe. The Lite swaps the expected heft for an EVA sole inspired by a 1987 Clarks archive. It should be worn, not placed on a shelf beside the ticket stubs.
The nine-badge set, branded guitar-pick charm and tonal lion print. Images courtesy of Wasted Paris and Clarks Originals.
Keep the box
Even the packaging refuses to behave like packaging. The square black box opens onto a dense collage of gig-era ephemera, with photography by Kevin Cummins included in the design. The badges sit beside the shoes like the contents of a personal archive. Wasted has made the unboxing part of the styling, which is a clever way of admitting that the culture around a shoe can be as charged as the shoe itself.
No one joins a scene by buying its souvenirs in a box. Wasted seems to understand the joke. It does not pretend this is an untouched relic from 1996; it gives the wearer the pieces and leaves the final edit open. Pin everything on. Wear the lions bare. Change the laces. The point is not to preserve the era in plastic; it is to put its scraps back into circulation.
The Wasted x Clarks Originals Wallabee Lite launched on October 15 and is listed at €149 through Wasted Paris, with the release also offered at its Paris store. Availability will depend on size.
The nicest thing about it is that the references are not locked into one perfect arrangement. A pin can move. A lace can change. A favourite record can be played until the sleeve falls apart. That is how memorabilia gets a life, and how a Wallabee stops looking like it belongs only to the past.
