In so many ways, Wallabees are anti-fashion: a truly rudimentary design, the outright primitive (yet immeasurably comfortable) crepe sole, materials and colorways that until relatively recently more loudly screamed 6th grade Latin teacher than bleeding edge fashionista. But in terms of my favorite all-time silhouettes, they rank right up there with the adidas Stan Smith and the Gucci loafer as the most indisputably, inherently stylish footwear designs of all-time. And a certain must-own.

But why? I suppose the “anti” element is part of it. Truth be told my first interaction with them was, in fact, in my 6^th grade Latin class, rarely if ever a bastion of personal style flashpoints. ’88, time to set it straight – the nascent years of my lifelong love affair with hip-hop, to be sure, but not in this instance. Not yet anyway. My erstwhile teacher Mr. Peros rocked them faithfully, presumably for the comfort and versatility of the tan suede version, and not for their longstanding appeal with the Jamaican rudeboy set. Nor, as far as I can deduce, any connection to vociferous Wally-supporters Ghost and Rae.

As I would later learn, Wallabees have been a favorite of hip-hop heads and Jamaican rudeboys alike, and the many overlapping elements of each, for some time. As evidenced in Jamel Shabazz’s seminal Back in the Days, the island appeal of Clarks’ iconic design (originally released in 1967) was brought to the shores of NYC’s vibrant inner cities generations ago, and were part of the uniform of many hip-hop pioneers, pre-dating their somewhat knock-off, if more ubiquitous, comfort contemporaries “British Walkers”.

At a time about a half decade before Wu Tang breathed new life into not only Wallabees themselves as a fashion staple, but the “dipped” look of yore in general (Sidebar: It is somewhat hilarious now to think about Rza reminiscing about this era – “the good old days” of ’87, when “everything was lovely” – in the lead in to “Can it Be All So Simple”, off of 36 Chambers which came out a mere 5 years after the era he was referencing. Wistfully recalling 5 years ago seems funny now, given how wistfully I recall the days around which I first heard that album. But I digress…), I remember seeing Wallys on the shelves at several Downtown Boston sneaker/gear stores, during my initial forays into town to drool over Forums and Skyjackers and Powerphase Mids, not realizing that they still had a crepe-sole foothold in the hood. Soon to be supplanted in many ways by Timbs. But I always associated them with my Latin teacher.

Not that Mr. Peros wasn’t, in retrospect, pretty dope. He was a public school teacher of a long-dead language, yet was the most innovative teacher under whom I perhaps ever had the pleasure of learning. He invented a truly legendary in-class game called P-Ball, a take on basketball in which students would break into teams, each seated on one side of the classroom in the existing rows and columns. A Dunk-It basketball hoop (a pre-cursor to Little Tikes) placed front and center, each chair representing a point value commensurate to how many rows it was removed from the front of the room (1st row = 1, 5th row = 5 etc.), and once a week, students would get to answer flash card questions to earn a chance at shooting a yarn ball at the hoop. Brilliant.

But I’m not just talking incorporating visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning into the mix in one fell swoop. I’m talking a standings board kept on the rear wall, winningest teams and leading scorers posted weekly – it both leveraged and fostered the inherent athletic instincts of everyone in the class, flat out MADE people want to take the class to begin with, and drove a season-long competition amongst all teams (names chosen from famous Classics works: Titans, Cyclops, Argonauts, Gladiators, etc.). Mr. Peros turned Latin into a badge of honor. Street cred. Vitrum vium.

So in that sense, maybe he did have an eye on something beyond his easy, corduroys-and-a-crewneck demeanor. And was a sly early purveyor of downlow coolness. But for me it wasn’t until about a little more than a decade later that I first made the leap, admittedly due to how fresh I thought Richard Ashcroft looked on the cover of The Verve’s Urban Hymns , a decidedly non-hip-hop jumping off point (although they did get busted for sampling without clearing on ‘Bittersweet Symphony’…) while rocking them sockless.

But like any fiend hooked on “dope”, the noun or the adjective, all it took was one hit. And its been on ever since. For me, as I have noted in several past posts, I have a certain thing for the trad (not The Trad, as it were, although I also happen to have latent love for my man John Tinseth as well) – elements of my wardrobe that as a more capricious youth I considered too “old man” or ”uncool”, several of which were favorites of my dad growing up, now take on special sartorial prominence. Navy blazers, cordovan penny loafers, brown wingtips, charcoal and navy instead of black – all of these preferences are rooted in having, at one point, not understood their inherent beauty and versatility. And with age certainly comes wisdom.

I suppose Wallabees occupy a similar space for me. But unlike most of those aforementioned pieces, which live on the dressier end of my style spectrum, Wallys wade into a different, more casual aspect of it that carries equal weight in terms of how I express that part of myself: hip-hop. And for the past 15 years, no single style of shoe has meant inherently more to me in terms of representing my personal style than them, for several reasons.

For one, I love the fact that as popular as they have grown as a darling of the (ugh) “sneakerhead” community, and for as many truly ringing collabos as they’ve executed over that time, I still don’t see a lot of heads rocking them. For me, I understand why – you really have to have flavor to wear them well. They are a perfect example of something many can appreciate from afar, on the shelf, but not many can actually pull off. Not unlike a Coogi sweater or Cazal shades, fellow retro hip-hop icons that are best left to those who don’t have to ask (Cardinal Rule of Flavor: if you have to ask if you can pull something off, you can’t.)

But many can. My man Adam Leaventon, bka @airrev, Mr. founder of Niketalk and a Complex Top 50 himself, loves him a Wally. Another former respected colleague from my PUMA days, Theo Keetell, now runs Marketing for Clarks (Hire me, fool!), and has taken materials and colorway stories to the next level and beyond, dropping what are easily my two of my favorite Wally designs ever (Basketball Horween, Extra Butter/Halal Guys Red Sauce) within the last couple of years. They are the anti-Yeezy: understated, easy on the eye, timeless…and you hardly ever see them. And when you do, they are normally on the feet of true Originals (no pun intended).

And for me, that really makes me love them even more. Part of what defines flavor for me, probably the largest part actually, is willingness and ability to wear something not everyone else is wearing – whether it be one well-placed vintage accessory, a long-forgotten pair of ill sneakers that have clearly been on ice for the better part of a decade (like fine wine, rare sneakers are always better after being left to age a bit as everyone else ruins theirs), or a DIY riff on an existing garment or shoe. The pride that comes with knowing I’m likely to be the only person rocking a given item is perhaps the most compelling reason for me to cop it. Although it appears to be the polar opposite of what passes for style in even otherwise style-obsessed dudes these days.

Which is why I love vintage shopping so much. And more pointedly, why I am so excited about this pair of custom bubble gum pink Wallys I just completed (shown in the pic). My affinity for this particular shade of pink (not Millennial Pink, not Komen/BCA Pink; more of a Regular Flavor Hubba Bubba Pink) is well documented. I’ve done Uptowns, adilettes, InstaPump Furys (wore them to two interviews at Reebok, and they alone almost got me two different jobs), a Kangol Bermuda Bell – all because I wanted those items in that color and the brands themselves simply didn’t make them.

Which would have been fine in regard to these Wallys, were it about 10 years ago. Back then, Clarks actually made and sold white leather Wallabees with the gum crepe sole as part of their core line. First straight up white, then an antiqued white, whereby the leather was finished to look beat up and broken in (luckily it was a finish easily removed with acetone). At the time I happened to be in a metallic Vegas gold phase, born of the afore-mentioned AirRev’s impeccably executed PUMA x Undftd 24K Mids. So I dutifully stripped and customized a pair of antique white Wallys in homage to those. Next was a bone white, to replace the still-too-preppy-for-me white bucks of the standard issue Ralph Lauren employee wardrobe, before moving onto camo customs of several sorts.

Unfortunately in the intervening years, Clarks ceased production on a plain white leather silhouette, to the dismay of me and, presumably other customizers everywhere. So as my fever dream of a bubble gum pink Wallabee grew stronger as of late, I lamented the lack of a blank white Wally with which to start a new Angelus custom adventure.

Then I remembered that the sister pair to one of my favorite Wally collabs – the White Sauce version of the Extra Butter x Halal Guys Wallabee – was available in a beautiful, gleaming, coke white suede. So it was now only a matter of tracking down a pair (paying through the nose, pun intended, was, unfortunately, not an option).

Fast forward approximately six months, following a brief ebb in the disappointment of this quest when I saw my man Theo had put out a “Color Pack”, which happened to consist of a coral suede that was, if not quite bubble gum pink, then certainly close enough to satisfy my craving, I had all but given up hope. Seems the Color Pack Wally only came in the low, and being a staunch Boot-only Wally wearer, I was left again to wait, appetite now, somehow, further whetted.

Luckily for me (to some degree anyway) a blind bid I had placed (and had definitely forgotten about) on the Extra Butter White Sauce via StockX came through, entirely out of nowhere. The lone remaining hurdle would be finessing a custom pink suede (I’d done leather, textile, and PU/EVA before, but never suede) dye job…at least until the shoes themselves actually arrived.

Perhaps it was an apprehension about my first suede customization, perhaps it was a latent guilt about having spent $115 on a pair of brand new limited edition Wallabees that I would easily have worn as is on their own, but could possibly be on the precipice of flat out ruining. Or perhaps it was just how perfectly that white suede was executed by the team at Clarks (probably mostly the latter), but it took me a good month to finally do the deed.

And damn am I glad I did. The color is rich, the nap highlights the different tones of what for my money is a truly beautiful, eye-catching yet classy, shade of pink. And it pops perfectly on this traditional silhouette, as jarring (and somewhat beautifully silly) as it looks to most. I ditched the extra Extra Butter and Halal Guys hangtags and opted only for the Clarks Originals one, which in itself looks even better with the subtle gold foil wordmarks.

My only beef now is working through that unavoidable heartbreak all Wallabee wearers have experienced, when a pristine deadstock crepe sole gets utterly ruined within moments by the inevitable stickiness of sidewalk dirt and dust. Seems no matter how much Scotchgard or Crep you spray on, it is impossible to keep natural gum 100% clean.

Just as well I suppose – now I have an excuse to do another pair. Just as soon as I nail down another of those beautiful cocaine-toned White Sauce Wallys…the shit just be callin’ me, man…