Jandals – Stop Resisting

You know you want to wear them, just do it.

When I visited Japan several years ago, I couldn’t get over how well dressed everybody was. And I mean everybody. From those on the cooly named Thunderbird bullet train to clattering chopsticks on the delicious sushi train, the Japanese dress with precision and style, paragons of pride. Louis Vuitton handbags adorned every her, and all the hims wore dapper loafers and a casually suave scarf – fashion fusion.

Needless to say, I felt like a hillbilly at the Hilton, underdressed in my Look Mum No Hands (a cycling cafe in London) T shirt, Earth Sea Sky tramping shorts and…. jandals. When it got a bit nippy I slipped effortlessly into my Macpac puffer and felt as snug as a swaddled pair of Geisha’s feet.

After two weeks of towering amongst such snappy dressers, I did begin to wonder if perhaps our NZ dress code was possibly a bit on the casual side. After a month, I felt like a complete slob and vowed to go Japanese.

Firstly I visited an Onsen, only to discover that the bathing suit dress code was ‘gentlemen, stand down’. Clearly I started in the wrong place. Next I tried a kimono which I thought was pretty cool, but it was kinda hard to ride a bicycle. By this point it was time to return to NZ so I left the land of all things tiny and came home with a renewed commitment to dressing smarter.

Well. When I arrived back at Auckland airport I was stunned. I could not believe how casually people were dressed. I had forgotten. Sweatpants waddled sweatily in all directions and there were so many hoodies I thought I had crashed a monks’ day out. Scruffy jeans dragged around people’s ankles, and every time someone bent over to fiddle with their luggage, butt cracks shouted obscenities at me.

Horrified I sped through the terminal faster than a drug mule and boarded the bus hoping for an expeditious getaway. However, unlike Japan our express buses do nothing quickly so as we lumbered like a wet Sunday into town I reflected on the unkempt state of my fellow citizens.

Once back home and into routine, I did indeed endeavour to dress better. Shoes made from a dead crocodile, child labour jeans and Ben Sherman shirts my standard fare. I even lashed out on a couple of jackets that were so cool you could have started a penguin colony with them. I wouldn’t say I was to the standard of the Japanese or Italians, but I was at least making an effort.

However, as time marched on and the weather warmed, the cracks started to set in. The T shirts started to drift out of the wardrobe and shorts began to wangle their way into my trousers. And yes, finally the jandals reluctantly flip flopped their way to the front of the queue.

You see, I couldn’t hold out. Everywhere I went people were wearing jandals. I was surrounded. Cafes, supermarkets, weddings – yes weddings! It was hopeless. I had tried to be a jandal denier, but I didn’t stand a chance. Our cultural roots are just too deep.

So with a slightly heavy heart but lightness of foot, and the conflicting emotions of fashion failure and foot liberation, I slid my spreading toes into those thongs and sighed with resplendent pleasure. There are some things you just can’t fight. Chocolate, wine, sex, jandals – four deadly sins.

(I presume the remaining three are cooked meat, pink concrete, and dogs on leads.)

So, lets accept our destiny. As a community, kiwis take casual to a whole new level and a core component of our dress code, whether it be on the boulders of Moeraki or the food markets of Mangorei, nothing screams ‘us’ louder than a pair of jandals.

So to those of you who are holding out, give in, you know you want to.

Richard Alexander Bain

self confessed jandalman