On the Beaten Track

Having already surrendered their long black tights to suburban housewives, seen their burlap skirts turn up as dormitory curtains, their madras shirts as bedspreads, and their turtleneck sweaters on Sean O'Casey, far-out females from coast to coast stood dismally by while the squares got beat and left them, pad-ridden, behind. Commonzens told them to cling fast lest sandals, too, go the way of guitars, but too late. Before anyone could say "Cool it, dad," high fashion had taken over.

Sandals, of course, are nothing new. Alexander the Great wouldn't have been caught dead without them, and Julius Caesar wasn't. But only in recent A.D. days have they become something more than what to wear in the shower, at the beach, at home alone, or on a tour through alien lands whence the news will not get back. Gradually, as America discovered its special fashion nook, a knack for the sporting look, sandals began to be everywhere, and everywhere pretty much proper.

However, there are sandals and there are sandals. In Manhattan, Greenwich Village's cowhide standard will still raise eyebrows north of 59th Street; only on very special feet will they get by a doorman with class or a headwaiter with vision. But the introduction of the spaghetti strap and the low, more graceful heel has turned a little item into big business, earned fashion's acclaim and the blessings of women everywhere who have spent all the summers of their lives struggling into nylon stockings and old-style, cover-up pumps--all for the sticky sake of decency.

The credit is mostly Chanel's. The closed-toe, sling-back shoe shown with her Paris collection several seasons ago swept the Continental set off their cramped feet; slow to cross the sea, the shoe was introduced to the U.S. only last fall by Designer Herbert Levine, was instantly copied in every color in real and ersatz fabrics from Monterey to Montauk Point. Strictly speaking not a sandal except to the industry, the Chanel model spurred what Stylist David Evins calls "the less-shoe look," was such a staggering success on the market that even barer versions seemed worth a try.

They were. Today, at the beginning of sports shoes' hot season, sandals are hottest of all, far more popular than ever before. In any of a hundred shapes, whether exquisite and chic or plain and substantial, wrought with precision by careful hand or knocked out en masse by machine, littered with "jewels" at a cost in the neighborhood of $150 or woven of raffia for $2.99, sandals are increasingly the newest, the nicest and the niftiest way to step out in style. The squares? Swinging. The beats? Beaten.

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