Doc Martens At Fifty

In the UK, Dr. Martens is fifty this week. The iconic pop shoe with an oil, acid and piss resistant soul starting with punk, ska, grunge, Britpop, and soccer hooligans plus the rest of your proletarian bollocks. Footwear worshiped by the mass.

Once, I saw a Catholic priest give a sermon in a pair, fashionably red. Maybe he was a sinner. Docs offer different strokes for different folks. Nasty skinheads go for the fourteen-eye boot with a toe packed with hate; mods and punks run the leather rainbow, blue for the patriot, cherry red for the rebels, and later Dr. Marten molded a sandal for suburban parents pushing prams.

Comfortable in that deeper way, some wearers treasure their original pair like Long John Silver treasured chests of gold. They hang by their laces above beds on walls. Artists frame them. Elton John got high on his. (above)

Docs were a by-product of raging World War 2. One Doctor Mertens of the German Army's Medical Corps was fed up with the blisters on his feet after all that marching over Europe. He poked around bombed out airfields finding rubber tire scraps for the sole, pulled out his last, and shaped a new boot. Housewives were the first to buy into this new air-ware shoe revolution. Soon the Brits got wind of the bounce, and in 1960 the first Doc Marten boots hit high street shops. Cult status quickly followed.

It's a shoe that has seen many battles, probably more than any other; mods v rockers, punks v skins, soccer hooligan wars, suburbanites v dog poop. No matter which unholy mess you find your feet in, Docs will save you. They've got sole.

Tell us about your Docs below

Alan Black is the co-author of The Glorious World Cup - A Fanatic's Guide
www.thegloriousworldcup.com

 

 

 

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Comments

[KarlValentine]

03:44 PM on 04/01/2010

A year ago my Docs gave up the ghost, so I dropped by a half dozen shoe stores in Philly and DC to find a replacement. After many failed attempts, I found a guy with a green mohawk and a ring through his nose who gave me the bad news. His comment was: "Sorry mate, we have a few pair left in odd sizes, but we refuse to carry the new ones made in China. They're junk."

Well, I am a bit of a brand loyalist, and searched until I found a pair in my size at one of those dicey strip malls. It was all rather fitting, given that the Chinese Doc's are made of plastic, and other materials of unknown origin that couldn't have cost more than a buck to make, but I paid the $85 bucks and went on my way.

The short version--the soles fell out, the plastic rim around your ankle is painful (and unyielding over time), and the shoes don't have the look nor feel of the originals. Every corner was cut just to milk a once revered brand.



So, we're celebrating an erstwhile icon that lives not in the present, but alongside the likes of Kurt Cobain and the Grunge folks who brought them to America's attention. All sadly deceased. I only wish some American firm had acquired Doc’s, then maybe we would have had both eternally cool shoes to pass down to our children, but lasting jobs as well.

[chendri887]

06:50 PM on 04/01/2010

I'm with you. Globalization has not been kind to the shoe market.

[chendri887]

11:31 AM on 04/01/2010

I used to love my Doc Martens. I bought them every five years or so from the late 1980s, to the early 2000s. However, when the company stopped manufacturing in Great Britain, and moved to China, the shoes no longer fit me anymore. Sadly, I have not been able to buy a pair since then. Doc Martens, RIP.