Ugg and Teva Teamed Up to Make the World’s Ugliest Shoe

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A few days ago, Mary-Kate Olsen gave Vogue Runway Director Nicole Phelps a quote about the triple-faced fabrics she and her sister used in The Row’s latest collection that I found immensely funny and syntactically gratifying.

“You have to feel it,” she said. “If you feel it, it’s like a pillow.”

There’s a wonderful purity in the Olsens, those tiny girls who spawned copycats and parodies during the mid-’00s as they swaddled themselves in sidewalk-sweeping cardigans, returning and returning to the notion of clothing as comfort, and practically bedding. While others stuff their closets with chokers, Vetements jeans, and Thrasher tees, the codes of Olsen style are fundamental.

I filed that quote in my mental archive and didn’t expect to need it again very soon, but on Wednesday afternoon we received something in the Racked office that recalled it instantly: a pair of white sandals designed collaboratively by Teva and Ugg.

They’re an abomination, for sure. The shape is that of a regular Teva, with a slab of wooly sheepskin on top of the foot and at the heel. Confusingly, the toes remain exposed. But my god, if you feel it, it’s like a pillow.

If you enjoy the sensation of wriggling under the covers of a well-made bed in mid-winter — sheets properly tucked under the mattress to form a sort of straightjacket — you will understand how my feet feel right now, under my desk, as I write this. So cozy, bound by velcro straps under layers of UGGpure™ wool.

Teva x Ugg has resulted in another, more incredible monstrosity: a boot that clearly speaks to the Ugg side of its heritage.

While the sandal is priced at $175, that one — which has a certain Yeezy-ness to it — comes in at $225. Both cost too much for something that reads as a novelty item, and yet it also seems worthwhile to reward two brands who recognized their horrible synergy and dreamed of a world in which they could forge an object more repulsive than the Croc. The tagline to this project is the only thing it could be: “Suspend your disbelief.”

Forcing my coworkers to look and sending foot selfies to my loved ones, the feedback has been mixed. Cam thought they were ugly beyond belief, and therefore also the perfect Fashion Editor shoe. Annemarie said it looked like I’d just been released from the hospital after breaking both feet. My mother, from whom I inherited a real love of Tevas, which I do wear around on weekends, asked if she could have them.

Another friend asked where they could purchase a pair. The answer to that is on Teva and Ugg’s websites, right now.

Crocs, the World's Most-Polarizing Shoe