How gardening clogs overtook trainers to become the ‘It’ shoe of summer 2025
Shoe brands everywhere are clamouring to copy a certain silhouette this summer, and it’s all getting horticultural.
As fashion’s obsession with workwear marches on, the style-obsessed among us are looking in increasingly unusual directions to find inspiration.
We have mined kitchen-wear for nearly all its worth, courtesy of The Bear and all its stylish, shouty chefs. The painters and labourers have had their Carhartt and Dickies usurped, the hikers have had their boots and trainers pinched, and the fisherman have watched as their vests became fashion bait.
Now, style’s ever-seeking eye has landed upon the gardeners… yes, the gardening clog has just become the most stylish silhouette of 2025.
Shoe brands everywhere are pedalling variations on the simple gardening clog, with its rounded, rubber exterior and slip-on functionality. The cult shoe in New York right now — if you can believe it — is a pair of gardening clogs by French brand Plasticana. The Plasticana Gardana clog, made from hemp-plastic, was described by one New Yorker as “the ‘I live in Brooklyn’ shoes.”
But the clog has New York in a total chokehold, and it’s only time until clogmania spills over into London — in one way or another.
Merrell, recently collaborated with London-based brand YMC to create a version of Merrell’s extremely popular Moab Slide 2. Made with brushed leather and a leather footbed, the YMC x Merrell Moab Slide 2 is the natural evolution of the Birkenstock Boston Clog. Just even… cloggier.
They also collaborated with skate brand Dime to release a particularly sneaker-esque slip-on clog back in November. Despite looking like the kind of thing a pensioner would pop on before heading to Tesco, the shoe was modelled on a red carpet, a nod to its strangely fashionable appeal.
And where there are clogs, there are Crocs. The notoriously ugly footwear brand is successfully riding the clog wave, with a 20 per cent leap in stock this year after it reported higher than expected revenue.
Back in February, Meghan Markle donned a pair of Crocs clogs during an episode of her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, prompting a 60 per cent surge in on-site clog sales.
Birkenstock is equally leaning into the horticultural side of things, branching out from their hit suede Boston clog to a more rubber-y alternative called the “Birki Flow”.
But can a clog successfully replace the long-reigning trainer as shoe of the summer?
There’s one thing for sure this summer: whatever shoe you invest in, it better not have laces.
