This week Highsnobiety documented a full-on dad shoe arms race: ASICS dropped a mesh-sandal hybrid with what the publication called, accurately, a mad elderly aura. New Balance pitched its most engineered running shoe as the dad shoe of the future. At the same moment, The Atlantic published a piece on the strange comfort of the rewatch, arguing that people are returning obsessively to films, shows, and music they already know. Novelty fatigue is now a design category.
Ugly as Optimization
The dad shoe is not a failure of taste. It is taste that has completed the loop. Maximum cushioning, maximum surface area, maximum energy return. The ugly is load-bearing. ASICS, New Balance, and Vans (whose new Vibram-soled Amphibian skate shoe leans frog) are selling function that has become so extreme it wraps around into aesthetic. This is exactly what the rewatch phenomenon describes: when optimization is exhausted, familiarity becomes the feature. The Netflix algorithm surfaces ten thousand options. You put on Succession again. The Nike Innovation Summit produces a marvel of engineering. You buy your dad's shoe.
The Comfort Economy and Who Profits
A 2024 paper in the Journal of Consumer Psychology by Coelho et al. found that nostalgia-triggered purchases show significantly higher brand loyalty than novelty-triggered ones, and crucially, higher tolerance for premium pricing. The dad shoe is not a bargain bin item. The New Balance 1890 retails above $200. The rewatch is not passive. It is active emotional management. Both behaviors represent a consumer base that has been so thoroughly overstimulated by optimization culture that regression has become the premium product. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City found that people are also talking less than ever, a datum that fits the same pattern. Fewer conversations, more rewatches, more familiar shoes. The chronically online body is optimizing for low-friction sensation.