What Are HeyDude Shoes—and Why Are People So Mad at Them?

Max Berlinger
·6 min read
2

Collage: Gabe Conte

“If you’re talking to a dude and he’s wearing any of these things,” the stylist and musician Gabriel Mor posted to TikTok this past December, “that’s a runner.” (As in: Run! Fast!) First up on his list: HeyDude shoes, which Mor called “egregious” and compared to a Kleenex box.

“I have never seen a pair of HeyDudes that actually look like they fit,” Mor, 35, explained to me from his home in Oklahoma City last week. In short: They look too big on the foot, he says, the open-laced design makes the wearer look like a surly child, and the shape—the flat, rounded-toe box—is unwieldy. “They aren’t that comfortable, which seems to be everyone’s justification when you ask about why they wear them,” he added. “And at $65, they aren’t that cheap either.” Mor has even tried a pair on himself and found them chunky to look at and too loose to be practical.

He’s not alone. Spend any good amount of time on TikTok (which I do, for better or worse) and you might have been sucked into the lively, divisive discourse around HeyDude shoes. There are certainly plenty of strong negative opinions about them—another poster called them the “greatest threat to a relationship or marriage,” for example—but they have plenty of fans too. “I know y’all ain’t talking shit about HeyDudes,” posted Trystan Fossett, rightfully calling out the fact that those who say they forgo style for comfort will gladly don a pair of the equally clunky Ugg Tasman slipper. “You’d be better off stuffing your feet in two loaves of Sunbeam bread!” Meanwhile there’s a small universe of haul videos, GRWMs, and people showing their extensive HeyDude collections online, demonstrating the unexpected spell these shoes have cast over some. Like everything else these days, HeyDude could be interpreted as a symbol of the ever-widening combative divide that afflicts all things, from politics to comfy slip-ons.

For the uninitiated, HeyDude is a footwear brand founded in 2008 in Italy by entrepreneur Alessandro Rosano. Despite sharing a country of origin with the likes of Tod’s and Gucci, it’s a company ruthlessly dedicated to matters of comfort over style. They’re best known for the friendly sounding Wally, made from a breathable fabric upper, foam insert, and a flexible outsole that, if folded in half, will spring back to its original shape; some can even be tossed in the washing machine. As Mor noted, it has an “open” lace design, in which the laces are, in essence, decorative, made to remain untied. This allows wearers to slip their feet in and out with ease, one of the shoe’s biggest selling points. Its warm weather cousin, the Wally Free, meanwhile, comes equipped with open lattice outsoles so, when the interior foam inlay is removed, they become ventilated, a breathable option for summer. Generally the shoes range in price from around $50 to $80, however with sales, you can sometimes find them for around half of that price. Additionally there are mid-top and mule options, as well as sneakers and flip flops.

Not that they’re completely divorced from matters of aesthetics: A quick scan of their current assortment shows that, in addition to more subdued models, there are pairs decorated in American flag stars-and-stripes, camouflage, palm trees, and fish, while fabrics range from linen to denim. Meanwhile, there’s an entire category dedicated to the colors and codes of different colleges—U of Miami, Texas A&M, Alabama, and UNC, among them.

“I went to college in the late 2010s in Virginia, and that whole Topsider, moccasin style was very popular,” Aaron Royce, a freelance writer and former reporter at Footwear News, told me. “So when I saw these, I was like, Oh, I know who this shoe is for.

“This is no offense to HeyDude,” Royce added, “but these feel very anti–ugly shoe and anti–trendy shoe. I don’t imagine that the guy who has HeyDudes in his closet is the same sort of guy who has multiple color-coordinated cases of Air Jordans.”

Their spirited online presence is a feature, not a bug, of the brand. HeyDude has an active TikTok account, with upwards of 260,000 followers (in addition to 569K on Instagram), and has made a concerted effort in the world of social media marketing by frequently partnering with popular content creators on the platform, including a deal it inked with the online comedy group Dude Perfect and, most recently, Outer Banks star Chase Stokes (who could be read as an exemplar of their core customer). All of which seems to be working: According to a press rep, its “cross-platform social audience grew by 27%, and our cross-platform engagement rate grew by 19%.” On TikTok, the growth rate over the past six months is 300%.

Which isn’t to say there’s not a lot of organic chatter about the brand online, because there is, especially from fans who are young, white, and mostly reside outside of cities, in suburbs, or rural areas. Mor, who is part of the country band Jason Scott and the High Heat, says he’s seen them more and more at their shows in recent years. “They are big around the country community. I see a lot of people making the transition from cowboy boots to these the past few years.”

Indeed, much goes into the idea of “world-building” in fashion, with Ralph Lauren being the exemplar. If Lauren appeals to a romantic idea of the ranch and college quad, HeyDude offers a more homespun version of country life and the college experience.

“You know, there’s something to be said for going after a market that’s focused on affordability and comfort,” Royce said. “I would imagine there’s a majority of customers who want a shoe that’s comfortable and gets them to point A to B.” Royce may be on to something: Two years ago, HeyDude was acquired by Crocs to the tune of $2 billion (for context, the trendy sport shoe Salomon, which has made solid inroads in the fashion world over the past five years, raised $1.37 billion in an IPO earlier this year). In fact, HeyDude has a worthy precedent in Crocs, a brand that was once derided and is now deeply beloved by the fashion world. Could HeyDude x Balenciaga be on the horizon? Hey, (dude,) stranger things have happened.

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Originally Appeared on GQ

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