Yesterday I rummaged around Dover Street Market. If you still haven’t been to the new store in Haymarket, it should be top of your list, it’s insane. In amongst the killer Comme des Garçons Homme Deux blazers and £100 Undercover pin badge sets, I clocked these sneakers. And at first glance I assumed they were some Converse x Some Brand I’m Not Hip Enough To Have Heard Of colab. But no. They’re just straight up vanilla Converse. And so just 65 quid.

I’m not often in bed with Converse. What was, back in the day, a symbol of counterculture, is now more likely to be worn by a leisure-time executive along with some House of Frazer chinos and a Fat Face fleece.  I mean, sure, the quality is reasonable. I just think Converse these days and I see students exercising their ‘individuality’ in a lime green pair, or some bejewelled high-tops setting off an Eastern European barmaid. Not exactly covetable #menswear. Conversely (oh yeah), these are pretty stand out.

That floral detail is embroidered, not printed, so there’s a little relief on the surface of the fabric which makes for a finish that feels more premium than the swing ticket suggests. I think they’d work well with the kind of fits I relentlessly promote – Japanese, loose fitting, crumpled cotton, etc… And at 65 quid, I mean, why wouldn’t you? Weirdly they’re actually a fiver cheaper at Dover Street than they are on Converse.com. Bargains at Dover Street? Converse making a decent pair of kicks? The world’s turning in on itself.