Few shoes have invited the kind of rage that 2010s fashion writers reserved for the Lita by Jeffrey Campbell. The chunky ankle platform boot, a recession-core relic once seen on it girls like Lindsay Lohan, Demi Lovato and Vanessa Hudgens, was called “the Clydesdale hoof of modern footwear” and “the ugliest shoe in our closet”.
I disagree. As someone who straddles the millennial/gen Z line, I came of age on Nasty Gal dot com. Back then, Nasty Gal sold what would become indelible symbols of the era: skinny jeans, ballet flats, flower crowns, moustache-printed sweaters, and the like. (This was before the e-retailer’s founder, Sophia Amoruso, published her self-help book #Girlboss, the paragon of hyper-capitalist, lean in-style feminism.)
