Wallabees – suede shoes with a crepe-style squishy sole – were first created by British shoe manufacturer Clark’s in 1968, inspired by a moccasin called “Grasshopper” made by the German shoe company Sioux.
The shoes were so ugly they were cool. Like old pioneer moccasins or bush shoes, these kickers took you back to the frontier days of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. While you might not have been killing bears when you were only three, in your Wallabees, you looked like you could.
They kicked off their popularity among flower children and hippies, but became the absolute rage among average adolescents. They went perfectly with the mud-brown cords and beige turtleneck that every kid seemed to be wearing.
Wallabees also became popular in North America, becoming the shoe of choice for the era’s revolutionaries, free thinkers and counterculture icons.
Tons of Wallabee knock-offs came out, and any shoe with a brown suede top and a gummy, eraser-style sole came to be known as a Wallabee.
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