How Clarks Is Keeping Its ‘Big Three’ Icons as Relevant as Ever

It’s tough to know where to start the story with Clarks—not least of all because we here at Esquire have covered the brand a lot (like, a lot) over the years. The beloved British institution celebrates its 200th anniversary this year, so that seems like a pretty good place to begin. But the real heads—the fans who obsess over each new iteration of iconic models like the Desert Boot, Wallabee, and Desert Trek—are going to want to fast forward a little more than a century. Because even though the brand transformed the small town of Street in Somerset into a shoemaking hub starting in 1825, it didn’t offer much for men in the early days.

For a long while, the focus was on women’s and children’s shoes. It was a good business. But by the end of the Second World War, Nathan Clark—great-grandson of James Clark, who founded the business with his brother Cyrus—wanted to branch out. He’d joined the Army Service Corps in 1941, and around 1944 happened upon a boot that he thought was promising.

A vintage Clarks ad from 1955.

“There are a couple of stories as to where he discovered it,” says Tim Crumplin, archivist at the Shoemakers Museum, an independent organization that chronicles Clarks’ two-century history and maintains an impressively complete collection of company correspondence, vintage marketing, and original shoes. “One of them was an officer’s retreat in Kashmir, where he saw off-duty officers that sourced them from the bazaars of Cairo.”

If you know your Clarks lore, you know we’re talking about the Desert Boot. Arguably the most recognizable Clarks silhouette of all time, its initial reception was chilly, to say the least. Even in 1946—two years after Nathan proposed the design—no one back in Street had made a pattern for it, much less a sample version.

Mods on Brighton Beach—wearing Desert Boots, of course—in 1979.

“It was never seen as a priority,” Crumplin explains. “So that’s when Nathan basically cuts the pattern himself, takes it to the Stock Committee [which decided what shoes would be put into production], has it kicked out, and then says, ‘Well, I’ll take it to the Chicago Shoe Fair.’” Since Nathan was the manager of overseas development at the time, no one could really stop him.

Esquire was based in Chicago at the time, and editor Oskar Schoefler saw the style at the 1949 fair. He took a liking to the simple, versatile lace-up and helped popularize it in America. Eventually, it made its way back to Britain. And now, of course, it’s beloved everywhere from Jamaica to Tokyo, a true global icon. A strange path, perhaps, but one that wound up being followed by another couple of core Clarks styles not long afterward.

“That happens with the Trek and the Wallabee,” Crumplin says. In 1968, Clarks introduced the square-toed Wally to some initial success before popularity dropped off precipitously. “The Wallabee, again, is a product that doesn’t float particularly well in the UK and has to go to the U.S. before it really gains any degree of traction because they’re just more receptive to new fashion and casualization.”

Slick Rick wearing Wallabees in New York City in 1991.

“By the time the Desert Trek comes along in the early ’70s,” he continues, “they’ve learned that they’re gaining more success for those kind of idiosyncratic styles in the North American market than they are in the UK. They almost established it over there and then bring it back to the UK 18 months, two years later when the British have started to catch up with American fashion.”

Eventually, Clarks’ “big three” shoes became subcultural staples, worn by Rude Boys in Jamaica, Mods in London, the hip-hop community in New York—the list goes on. “I’ve seen pictures of Run-D.M.C. wearing Wallabees in Hollis, Queens, in 1984, before they were wearing Adidas,” Crumplin says.

By the ‘90s, those kinds of cultural bona fides were especially appealing to in-the-know customers who saw the crepe-soled classics as a counterbalance to the dominance of branded sportswear.

“These younger tastemakers, if you like, they found these authentic British designs, albeit maybe a little quirky, but for them they were an alternative to that sort of mainstream sneaker culture,” explains Dawn Porto, the company’s SVP of global wholesale product. “Recognizing that we’ve got this momentum, Clarks then established Clarks Originals as its own distinct sub-brand—as opposed to it being part of the main brand—to celebrate those key silhouettes.”

But even though the Originals imprint was created to cater to hardcore fans, the company didn’t succumbed to the impulse—all too common for brands with cult followings—to pander. “It tended to be street-style dominated rather than something that was proactively marketed,” Crumplin says. “When you talk to people that worked at Clarks in that time, they were like, ‘We just tried to ride that wave rather than manipulate it. People were buying the shoes anyway. We didn’t have to sell them to them.’”

Even A-list fans weren’t courted with gifts or special treatment. When Ghostface Killah set up his famous Wallabee factory in the video for “Apollo Kids,” his team just bought out store after store. And when an advertising manager received a call that Liam Gallagher had just purchased six pairs of Desert Boots, he simply asked the shop to pass along his number, so “if there’s anything that he can’t find in the store that he likes, we can see if we can provide him with it.”

This year, Gallagher and Clarks will reveal their second collaboration together. There are also collaborative releases coming with labels alike Needles, Martine Rose, and Human Made. Things have clearly evolved a bit when it comes to working with external players and reaching out to the tuned-in shoppers who have helped the company make it to two centuries in business.

But designers are still stopping by the archive constantly, on the hunt for inspiration or checking out vintage lasts—the wooden or plastic molds around which shoes are shaped—to make sure they’re staying true to original silhouette of a Wally or a Trek.

A rack of lasts at Clarks HQ in Street, Somerset, England.

Other brands “might have a cupboard or a room full of stuff, but not strong rooms with 25,000 single shoes in them,” Crumplin explains. “Designers and technologists can come here. They can view materials from different parts of the collections. They’ll look at catalogs with technical details, they can look at the original lasts. We’ve got the original shoes. We’ve got the patterns. We’ve got the marketing materials. Also, things like swing tags, point of sale items. They can verify they’re using the correct leathers, or the correct threads, or the right laces, or the right stitch details.”

Porto echoes the importance of getting the fundamentals right before tweaking things with a new idea or partner. “Each time we do a collaboration or we work with a design director or somebody, we still hold onto that heritage,” she says. “That’s really what’s kept it the way it is. And in a way, I guess it’s a little scary. Because you think, ‘Gosh, we’re really dining out on this. We are really holding onto this one thing.’ But it feels like a recipe that’s respected by our consumer.”