Wearing Uggs make us look slobby and basic

LOVE them or loathe them, Uggs are back, embraced by Gen Z and A-Listers alike. Here, Fashion Editor Clemmie Fieldsend takes aim at the Noughties clumpy footwear, currently threatening to reclaim the high street. Uggs have had a reboot – and are taking the world by storm again. And I can’t help feeling baffled, even slightly disturbed, that this footwear plague of the mid-2000s has made a comeback.

Image Credit: The Sun [Bella Hadid walking down a city street, eating a slice of pizza.]

Fans of the boring brown boots — which make wearers look like they’ve stepped into a baked potato — argue that they are cosy, like a hug for the feet. Comfortable? Maybe. But stylish? Absolutely not. Lyst, a fashion search platform – the Google of clothes, if you will – charts what everyone is looking at worldwide and their most recent report irked me. Ranking products from global search trends, sales and social media data, it found that the second most popular fashion product in the WORLD is Uggs’ £145 Ultra Mini boot.

Image Credit: The Sun [Paris Hilton at London Heathrow Airport.]

Isn’t that just sad? It means we’re so slobby, unimaginative and basic that the most we strive for in life is beige, slouchy footwear. It’s no coincidence that social media is awash with comical memes featuring Uggs in various states of collapse or covered in yucky stains. Most things that are deemed a trend or “cool” these days are from the Noughties, and as someone who was there for all those fashions, I feel I’m well qualified to have my say.

Image Credit: The Sun [Lindsay Lohan filming a scene for "Just My Luck".]

Uggs became popular among my friends one summer, when everyone teamed them either with low-slung jeans or denim shorts — or, worse still, Jack Wills tracksuit bottoms that they then stuffed into a pair of the classic tan boots. They were designed to be an indoor slipper, but we oh-so-alternative tweens started wearing them outside. Forget punk — we were the real rebels. The sheepskin stompers became a wardrobe essential, but even when style icons of the day including Paris Hilton, Beyonce and Lindsay Lohan sported them, I couldn’t get on board.

Image Credit: The Sun [Beyoncé Knowles at a press conference.]

At the time I had two opinions on them. Firstly, most Ugg-adopters were not A-listers — the biggest stars didn’t own a Juicy Couture tracksuit and didn’t parade around with their rat-sized pet chihuahua stuffed into a Louis Vuitton bag. Secondly, Uggs just looked stupid. All those teenagers with spindly legs, tight baby tees and layers of Topshop jewellery — desperately trying to look older than their years — but with shapeless, spongy foot coffins at the bottom of their legs.

Image Credit: The Sun [Emily Ratajkowski walking down the street, looking at her phone.]

I didn’t get it. Don’t get me wrong, I did bow to pressure and buy a pair of Fugg boots (that’s fake Uggs, of course) from River Island. And I did wear them with denim shorts in the stinking hot summer. In fact, I remember my dad scoffing at how sweaty and smelly my feet must have been. And they must have been pretty rancid, right?. Fast forward to 2025 and it seems the kids of today haven’t evolved.

Image Credit: The Sun [Naomi Watts on the set of "All's Fair" in a beige suit, cape, and hat.]

I never really liked them, but when you’re young fitting in is better than standing out. I wore them in Paris one sweltering summer while on holiday, thinking I was the bee’s knees. But I was quickly informed by the snooty stares and turned-up noses of multiple Parisians that this was not the case. Worse still, I nearly fainted from heat exhaustion. Ugg boots first originated in Australia — a country not exactly known for its high fashion — back in the 1930s when they became the work boot of choice for sheep shearers.

Image Credit: The Sun [Woman in Ugg boots, jeans, and a sherpa vest holding a coffee cup.]

In the 1970s the sheepskin footwear was adopted by the Aussie surfing community, who were looking for something to keep their feet warm after a surfing session. It wasn’t until the late Nineties that Uggs went mainstream. Unsurprisingly, they are said to have been given their name because they were thought to be “ugly”. Say no more. The world’s Ugg-liest footwear is still an off-duty look for teens and twenty- somethings, although the Jack Wills trackie bottoms have been replaced by £50 Adanolas and — surprise, surprise — low slung jeans are also back.

Image Credit: The Sun [Jennifer Lopez wearing baggy jeans, platform boots, and a green Dior purse.]

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to dress how I did when I was 15. I am an adult and I will dress like one. But as the latest statistics prove, women of all ages are snapping up Uggs in their millions. According to Reuters, sales have surpassed expectations, up by 14 per cent last year. The beige blobs have also accumulated more than a billion mentions on TikTok, the barometer of all things cool. It is a staggering amount.

Image Credit: The Sun [Beige suede slipper boot.]

And right now, online searches for Uggs are up 280 per cent thanks to the cold weather. I get it. It’s cold and shuffling along a freezing pavement in a pair of toasty shearling boots seems a good option, in the same way wearing wellies on a muddy walk would. But you don’t wear weighty Wellingtons with wide-leg jeans and a blazer, do you?. Picture it, you’d look ridiculous. But that’s just how you look in your Uggs, desperately clinging to a trend, just because a 17-year-old influencer lounging on the front steps of a home that isn’t even hers says they’re cool.