Hi, I'm Kristin. Normally, I write about the intersection of style & body positivity & Goldfish Crackers, but today I'm trying something different.
You see, two years ago, I got engaged...while wearing accidentally wearing Crocs.
Naturally, my work friends — the very fashionable ladies of BuzzFeed's Ladylike and Boldly — have dragged me for this endlessly.
Not really, they are all kind and supportive ladies — but I get that Crocs have a bit of a reputation for being a ~controversial~ shoe. However, I am a firm believer that ANY CLOTHING/ACCESSORY ITEM CAN BE A PART OF A CUTE LOOK! It's just a matter of being creative and having a point of view.
So, I decided to buy five different pairs of Crocs, and tried to see just how many of these Crocs I could successfully style into cute outfits. Then my friends scored all the outfits on how successfully I integrated Crocs into them!
View this video on YouTube
(Just a note: This project was not sponsored by Crocs, and Crocs did not provide us with any shoes — we bought 'em with our own pennies!)
In total honesty, I don't think I quite realized how unapologetically goofy Crocs were before I got all the shoes I ordered in the mail.
I started easy by styling some basic black Crocs, because if you squint they're basically just clogs or mules?
So many holes.
Styling this outfit was SHOCKINGLY easy. Here is what I came up with for the first outfit, which was one and done.
It was also, as I would soon find out, the only outfit to be one and done. I found this gingham BooHoo romper and then threw of some 90s accessories together and voila. Easy! DECEPTIVELY EASY!
Then, everyone scored this outfit on a scale of 1 to 10, and this was a clear home run.
Next were these fruit clogs, which have a ton of bright colors. My strategy was just to pick one and then have the crocs work as kind of a statement piece.
And so my journey into buying shit and then returning it over and over began!
My initial plan was to style this with yellow cullottes, which, OK, let's all get a good laugh at me, because in person this was the fashion equivalent of trying to get rid of a stain by just covering the entire outfit in pizza grease.
I abandoned the statement color idea and then tried denim because it's a neutral, but the dress on the right was honestly just too cool for these shoes, I needed a more fun denim.
All I can say for my final outfit is thank god overalls are cool again. And that fanny packs are the perfect waist cincher!
Really, the fact that the '90s are back made a lot of these outfits easier, because I just hopped in my time machine and copied whatever I was wearing back when my most comprehensive understanding of sex came from Titanic. Which in this case, was this white crop top and overall dress from Forever 21.
This outfit also scored high, but even if it hadn't, I'd still keep wearing this because it's literally the uniform I never knew I needed.
The next pair was the yellow crocs, and huh boy.
There is just...something about the nuclear yellow color that makes all the worst design features of crocs stick out: The fact they're foot shaped, the holes that are like cockroach-sized portals to hell, the fact that even though the shoe is made of all the same material, it has five different textures. You look like you're wearing shoes in a universe where everyone has to wear their cheese on their feet.
I was stumped by this one basically until the last minute.
If you try to match them with yellow clothes, it's too much, and if you try to make them a statement shoe, you can see them from space. You can't beat them OR join them. You just have to watch from the sidelines while they give everyone in a tristate area trypophobia.
So for my outfit for these shoes, I realized that there is literally only one thing that can distract from giant yellow shoes, and that is boobs.
I got some pasties and basically just assembled this top and skirt from Forever 21 I would have worn in high school were it not a one-way ticket to grounded town.
This outfit did not score well, which: Yeah, I get it.
Next up were these tropical clogs which were my personal favorite.
I sort of cheated here: When I was shopping for the crocs, this pair made me think of a romper that I wanted to buy anyway, so I thought this pair would be one and done as well.
Unfortunately my cheating did not pay off, as this romper with these crocs just sort of screams, "I love the pool, but not enough to actually get in."
The outfit for these crocs came to me at no shit, in the middle of the night.
I woke up from a dead sleep and remembered a bodysuit I saw two weeks prior and a skirt (both from Forever 21) I'd seen yesterday and wondered if they were meant for each other, and voila, it turned into my most surprising success.
When we tallied the scores, this was my most surprising success.
Finally, I styled the camo print Crocs, which I bought almost entirely because I didn't think it was possible to make non-Crocs lovers believe.
Really, camo print is just a collection of neutrals, so why not just build an outfit out of those neutrals?
I thought these might be the pair that I could finally style with pants, but I think there's just something about pants with crocs that just sort of makes your feet look out of proportion with your legs.
But honestly, when I found this olive coat, this outfit fell into place.
I honestly don't even care whatever anyone else thinks, I love love love this outfit (Bodysuit and coat from BooHoo, skirt from Forever 21).
This ended up being the most polarizing outfit in terms of scores, but I didn't really care.
So, what did we learn?
Probably my biggest takeaway from this wasn't that I was able to come up with cute and fun outfits for these crocs — 99% of creating a cute outfit is the confidence you have while wearing. But what the challenge DID do was force me to reach outside my normal fashion tastes and wear colors and items I normally wouldn't shop for. Sometimes hole-filled rubber limitations are the best ways to get them creative juices flowin'.