This Summer, Viva La Flip-Flop
- Bea Isaacson
- May 7
- 4 min read
The Australians call it a thong for a reason.
In case you missed it, Gigi Hadid has partnered with the Havaianas flip-flop brand for a series of shots that places the supermodel atop and across surfboards and sandy beaches for the ultimate retro-feeling vacation vibe.
Not since Rihanna’s 2011 Vita Coco collaboration has a celebrity-led campaign featuring some of the most seemingly everyday objects so successfully sold the beach life to out-of-season cosmopolitans. Smiling coyly towards the camera, the fresh-faced, combed-back-hair Hadid looks not dissimilar to a Mad Men-era model, with the nostalgic lighting and ‘60s prints to boot— or, rather, sandal.
“Whether it’s my shorts to go to volleyball practice, or jeans to go get a smoothie, it feels like me to put on Havaianas,” Hadid told ELLE. It’s easy to experience a spiritual eye-roll whenever a celebrity professes personal usage of a product they’re being paid to promote — remember when everyone thought Kendall Jenner was going to come out but instead just told us she used Proactiv for her acne? — but in this case, I’m inclined to believe it.
For the urban flip-flop has been on the rise for a while now. The flip-flop market (it’s a thing!) was valued at over 4.7 billion USD for 2025, an increase of 1.2 billion from 2019. This is not a whirlwind, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, seemingly overnight affair with all the timings and trimmings of a TikTok-ignited, subsequent PR campaign-fanned phenomenon. Instead, the flip-flop renaissance has been a lot slower and, with that, considerably more authentic in its spread.
The Row, for example, debuted its The City Sandals in its SS23 collection, pairing them on the runway with black gloves and an elegant midi dress. The $860 sandals, shaped like everyday flip-flops, serve to neatly conclude the outfit, a classic offering reflecting The Row’s trademark minimalism. In this instance, the flip-flops act as a neutral compliment to the outfit, allowing the accessorising of the gloves to command the observer’s gaze. It’s a kind of shoe for the sake of not being barefoot, in the most comfortable, sparse format possible.
Other brands have since followed suit. The zeitgeist brand of our age, Miu Miu, included several pairs of kitten-heeled flip-flops in their SS25 runway collection — complete with chipped nail polish, for the ultimate messy-chic girl look — while Ferragamo’s take on the classic silhouette meets the ballet pump at its source and accessorises it with winding ribbons. Unlike The Row’s flip-flosp — which have since been snapped up by Kylie Jenner and Zoe Kravitz — these are quirky reimaginations of the millennia-old style of the shoe, neatly re-appropriated to reflect the aesthetics of the respective fashion house.
The flip-flop spectrum is widening, and from the Miu Miu mild heel to Hadid’s Havaianas, these are not shoes exclusive to a beach vacation. Instead, flip-flops are city shoes in their own right, as The Row so clearly christened them. Too minimal in shape to be a statement piece and too discreet in format to demand attention, this shoe from our childhood exposes as much of the foot as possible — I suppose the Australians call it a thong for a reason — for the ultimate laissez-faire approach to urban dressing.
For wearing flip-flops in public is the no-bra look of the Tarantino persuasion. City strutting in a pair of flip-flops is a gorgeous exercise in repurposing vulnerability into strength; it says so much because it amounts to so little. More casual than a Birkenstock and more exposed than a Croc, having what is essentially your entire foot out in public — with nothing but a mere inch of plastic separating sole from ground — is rendered all the more sparklingly audacious with its redirection of purpose. Conducting an entire day wearing flip-flops is so utterly chic because of the level of confidence necessary to do so. And what makes it so deliciously fun is the notion of this symbol of nonconformity being something as innocent and innocuous as a flip-flop.
Flip-flops work so well on the beach because you want to feel the sand and the lapping ocean. Traditionally, when worn in an urban environment, it’s within the confines of your personal neighborhood for lazy weekend errand running, coupled with sweats and a messy bun of the 2011 honey-wake-up-Harry-Styles-is-downstairs variety. When instead paired with a fabulous outfit for some serious city slicking, the shoe grants the look not only considerable irony but also a genuine sense of defiant belonging within the anonymity of a city; for the wearer, the dirty city is only as threatening as a white sand beach. For shoes that cost as little as two dollars at Target, they symbolise a lot of grit and gumption.
Wearing flip-flops is by no means a new trend but rather a return to ‘90s minimalism and ‘00s neo-bohemia. In the days before every celebrity had a personal stylist for everyday dressing, Jennifer Aniston looked her coolest when snapped out shopping with a fantastic blow-dry, gorgeous red cargos, and black flip-flops; Sienna Miller, the doyen of modern bohemian dressing, avoided looking like she put too much thought in her outfit when her fur jacket-and-skinny jeans-for-a-night-out combo concluded with a pair of flip-flops hitting the tarmac. It is so fabulously random, so free-spirited in vibe, making any plotted outfit look casually thrown on. And isn’t that kind of the point of city dressing?
But as usual, the coolest city fits are not worn by the famous, but the random girl you find yourself staring at a bit on public transport. A few weeks ago, when London woke up to glorious warm sunshine so unseasonal for early spring, I was transfixed by a woman’s maxi skirt exposing the flip-flops underneath when she crossed her legs and shoved her Balenciaga city bag in between her legs. In a society dominated by clean girl monotonous piety and the remnants of Brat summer-curated maximalism, this stranger felt so at home on the London Underground that she deemed it appropriate to wear the last frontier of casual shoes across it. Well, of course, the next day, when the sky remained just as perfectly blue, I frantically dug out my old Havaianas to wear myself. Hadid was right; it did feel like me putting them on. Bad news for the people who make a fuss about hating feet. Statistically, fashionably, anecdotally: flip-flops are in for the summer. 🌀
Bea Isaacson is a culture and travel writer based in London.
