“If you're talking to a guy and he's wearing one of these, he's a runner,” stylist and musician Gabriel More wrote in a TikTok post last December. run fast!) First on his list were HeyDude shoes, which Mor called “horrible” and likened to a tissue box.
“I've never seen a pair of HeyDudes that actually looked like they fit properly,” Moe, 35, explained to me last week at his home in Oklahoma City. In short, they look too big for your feet, the open-lacing design makes you look like a sulky child, and the flat, rounded toe shape is awkward, he said. that “Because they're comfortable, that's what everyone says when they ask why they wear them,” he added. “Plus, they're $65, so they're not that cheap.” Mo tried them on himself and found them to be too bulky and loose to be practical.
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He's not alone. If you spend any significant amount of time on TikTok (for better or worse, I do), you may have found yourself caught up in the spirited, divisive debate over HeyDude shoes. Sure, there are plenty of strong negative opinions about them; another poster, for example, called them “the biggest threat to relationships and marriages.” But there are also plenty of fans. “I know y'all don't have a bad word to say about HeyDudes,” posted Trystan Fossett, rightfully pointing out the fact that those who say they'd sacrifice style for comfort would happily wear the equally rugged Ugg Tasman slippers. “I'd rather have two loaves of Sunbeam bread in them!” Meanwhile, there's a small world of howl videos, GRWMs, and people showing off their vast HeyDude collections online, indicating that these shoes have an unexpected magic for some people. Like everything these days, HeyDudes can be interpreted as a symbol of the ever-widening, combative divide that's plaguing everything from politics to comfy slip-ons.
For the uninitiated, HeyDude is a shoe brand founded in Italy in 2008 by entrepreneur Alessandro Lozano. It hails from the same country as Tod's and Gucci, but is a company that is all about comfort over style. The best known of these is the endearingly named Wally. They are made with a breathable fabric upper, foam inserts, and flexible outsole, and they can be folded in half and return to their original shape. Some are even machine washable. As Mor pointed out, the shoe has an “open” lace design, meaning the laces are basically decorative and don't get tied. This allows the wearer to easily slip their feet in and out, and is one of the shoe's biggest selling points. Meanwhile, the warm-weather Wally Free has an open lattice outsole and can be removed to allow for ventilation inside, making it a breathable option for summer. The shoes generally cost around $50 to $80, but you can sometimes get them for around half price on sales. There are also mid-tops, mules, sneakers and flip-flops.
That's not to say they're completely detached from aesthetics: A quick look at the current assortment shows pairs decorated with the stars and stripes of the American flag, camouflage, palm trees, and fish, in fabrics ranging from linen to denim, alongside more subdued models, while there are also categories dedicated to the colors and codes of various universities, including the University of Miami, Texas A&M, University of Alabama, and University of North Carolina.