Dr. Martens Picture yourself walking around East London in the early 70’s: a place filled with rejects, outcasts and rebels from the fringes of society. The early 40s saw Klaus Maerten and his old friend Dr Herbert Funck take risks and create a boot that was to go down in history. Skinheads were the first subculture to adopt the boot in the early 60s, spilling out of the East End of London, then across Britain and the world; initially non-racist and obsessive about their fashion, by the time the skinhead movement was corrupted with elements of right-wing extremism, Dr Martens had already morphed into an iconic status for a brave new world.
The late 60s and 70s saw the boot adopted by – not thrust upon – nearly all the ‘tribes’: Mods, Glam, Punks, Industrialists, Nu-metal, Hardcore, Straight-edge, Grunge and Britpop.
The Noughties saw the revival of dm’s with a new face: Daisy Lowe. The craze soon caught on again and were seen on no other than model ‘it girls’ Agnes Dean, Alice Dellal and Pixie Geldoff; with its new array of quirky designs and colours, it is more about fun this time than making a statement. You can wear them with baggy tees and rolled up skinnies, for that outlandish punk look, or a girly prom dress, just like Pixie did.
For those of you who are wondering what the future holds for our beloved Doc martens, well as you have seen 09 has brought us a boot in the form of grommet-detailed black boots edgy enough for the toughest of girls to wear, Easter brought us soft-pastel colours and the holiday season, bright, bold metallic-hued boots, branching away from the classic gold or silver, to new heights of eccentric blues and purples. If you are trying to say something, these sure say it for you.
2010 promises to bring us fabulously chic, floral, weather appropriate prints.
The iconic Dr Martens have been given an injection of Noughties cool, their sense of practicality now less relevant than before: these boots are moving on to bigger and brighter things. They have come full circle; it is a blank canvas on which a generation can paint their personality. In the words of Dr Marten himself; ‘The best form of rebellion is individualism’.
