Summer Solstice
Café Mancuso
Clarks Originals
Graduate Store
28/03/2024
Manchester, summer of 88. In the early hours of the morning, faces are tired, exhausted and happy, as the first rays of sunshine warm the damp ground that has been pounded all night by frantic dance steps. To the sound of acid house and roaring analogue bass, bodies have been dancing all night. A new kind of dance, young, feverish and free, spreading across the country like a powder keg ready to explode.
The first raves were born, and Clarks Wallabees were at their feet.
Clarks Originals, and the Wallabees in particular, have always been synonymous with underground and alternative culture. From the rough boys of Jamaica to the rappers of Brooklyn, and including what interests us today: the Manchester scene of the late 80s. As the decade drew to a close, a wave of freedom and artistic creativity was sweeping Britain, battered by the Tate years.
In Manchester’s clubs, led by the Hacienda, old psychedelic pop mixed with house and snatches of future Brit-pop. It all came together in the summer of ’88, when the countryside was taken over by the first raves, and a whole generation of young people came together in what looked like a new flower power movement. Several posthumous names will attempt to define this sudden craze. Summer Solstice, Second Summer of Love, Maddchester…
The common denominators in this new Woodstock spirit are acid house, baggy clothes (both a dance and a style of dress that’s part hippy, part football fan), smiley faces, MDMA, a peaceful state of mind, and of course the Wallabees to complete the outfits. Custom Wallabees, fake Wallabees, Wallabees worn down to the bone by the energy of all this effervescence.
In honour of this blessed era, Clarks Originals has revisited the wallabees with a psychedelic twist. The first is a model with a Yin-Yang motif on the upper, contrasting different suede colours and textures, embellished with three Clarks Originals tags, one of which is decorated with a daisy recalling the flower power spirit of the Maddchester movement. And a second model, all psychedelic wavy on an ultra-fresh blue/lemon colour.