Now 'odd' even cool
Mismatched shoes are suddenly a fashion statement, not the sleepy accident of the absent-minded.
Let us start by pointing out that the correct fashion term for this trend is "mismatched shoes", not odd ones. Wearing "odd shoes", apparently, implies that when you put those two, non-identical brogues on your feet this morning, it was an accident.
The fashion statements made by the street style set at Paris fashion week in February and on social media right now, are entirely deliberate.
It all started on the catwalk at Celine in September, when the instigator of all things cool and off-kilter, Phoebe Philo, sent models wearing odd boots - one black with one brown, one tan with one lemon - down her catwalk. It was simultaneously bold and subtle, the kind of considered styling trick that Philo's fans go wild for.
Like many of her recent fashion impacts (making trainers chic again, paint brush prints, et al) it is one that is easy to copy en masse.
As such, the street stylers have adopted it in real life outside the shows this season. Brooklyn Beckham has been giving it a go in his teenage high-tops and even White House press secretary Sean Spicer was photographed shod in black on one foot and brown on the other. (The photo went viral, but it wasn't quite the way it looked: He wore a brown shoe on one foot. On the other, he donned a dark blue-striped sock with a foot brace, the kind of boot-like contraption you'd wear if you hurt your foot.)
