How the floaters slipped out of fashion
For some time now, for some inexplicable reason, pointy shoes have been hip. Everywhere you look - in malls, hotels, restaurants, on the street, at bus stops and metro stations - you'll see people wearing them, maybe so that whenever they're standing in a queue, they can poke the heels of the person in front of them. "Can you hurry up please, or I will impale the soft part of your heel with my shoe-knife." You'll see intricate sandals, slippers, Rajasthani footwear, boots, sneakers, Hush Puppies. What you will not find anywhere are floaters.
Remember floaters? Those strappy things people wore on their feet because they believed, wrongly, that they looked good in them? They had infinite Velcro crunch. They were still popular until just a few years ago, I think (I probably still have my old pair lying around the house somewhere).
Floaters were mostly hideous, but somehow people were tricked into believing that these eyesores were cool. Admittedly my understanding of fashion is stunted at best - I'm often unable to tell the front of a T-shirt from its back - but I believe these unisex sandal-mutations fell into that vacuous classification of apparel we call "smart-casual".
You'll still find the stray misfit sporting them in public like it's 2002 (not that there's anything wrong with that), and shoe companies have a limited collection available on their catalogues even today for loyalists. But for the most part, floaters are now dead. The only demographic in which they're still popular is the under-five age group, because it's harder for small kids to un-Velcro them so parents don't have to worry about shoes flying around every 15 seconds.
The boom happened while I was still in school, over 15 years ago. Established footwear companies - from Nike and Adidas to Relaxo - diversified their portfolios to tap into this new market. Everyone had to own a pair. Different styles emerged, from the classic black-strap-around-the-ankles and another around the toes, to the more elaborate multi-double-sided-Velcro, fluorescent-stitching variants; "extra-comfort, sleek-modern, soft-fit, canvas-leather-hybrid, button technology innovation". The prices were inclusive as well so most people with disposable income could afford a pair.
And then, very slowly, like the air escaping a punctured balloon, they began to disappear. There's no Sherlockian mystery here; the floater craze waned over time as more and more people started to realise that they looked ridiculous in them. Like they were tied to their shoes; like their feet needed airplane seatbelts. I think the "No open footwear in restaurants and clubs" rule came into existence because of them.
The final death knell, though, may have been the socks, which were themselves facing extinction at the time. The socks-and-floaters (S&F) douchebag stereotype is mostly an American construct, but here in India too, there was a loyal faction of S&F upholders. It was often (not always) restricted to the 20-something studying at a professional college - let's say engineering - who had a lot of latent anger and would sometimes rebel against his parents buying his entire wardrobe by putting on socks with floaters. And also because it's quicker and requires less effort compared to shoes. (Why shoelace when you can Velcro?) Watching these well-meaning but hapless oafs made people realise it was time to ditch the floaters.
They were then consigned to the wastebaskets of history in the same "Um, really?" category that mullets and soul patches reside. And pagers too. Remember a time when every single male adult had a pager strapped to his belt to appear busy, periodically checking for any SOS updates. That level of self-importance remained unmatched until the invention of Bluetooth headset devices.
But you know, floaters weren't actually all that bad. They had a purpose to play in the era they existed, and I've worn my fair share as well. It's only the benefit of hindsight and a certain creative liberty that allows me to mock a harmless piece of endangered footwear. Fashion is supposedly cyclical, and it usually comes back with a vengeance.
What's worrying, in that context, is that in the place of floaters, we now have a bigger, badder, uglier, more comfortable beast that's really showing no signs of relenting. It's called Crocs, and it's here to stay.