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Two Centuries of Shoemaking, Still Run From Street

Clarks has made shoes in Street, Somerset since 1825, when brothers Cyrus and James Clark began stitching slippers from sheepskin offcuts left over from the rug trade. The company passed its bicentenary in 2025 and is still headquartered in the village where it started. The range now runs from school shoes to dress leather to the cushioned Cloudsteppers and Solevana lines, built on EVA soles with Cushion Soft and PillowSoft footbeds, while elsewhere the Contour Cushion footbed handles arch support and pressure relief and selected weatherproof styles use a GORE-TEX membrane. Sizing runs in multiple widths across much of the line, which is the reason a lot of people come back to Clarks after giving up on fit somewhere else.

The Two Shoes That Outgrew the Company

Most footwear brands have one signature. Clarks has two, and neither was designed to become one. The Desert Boot came out in 1950, drawn by Nathan Clark, great-grandson of James, from the crepe-soled boots he had seen British officers wearing in the bazaars of Cairo during the war. Head office was unenthusiastic. It went on to define a category. The Wallabee followed in 1967 and is the one people confuse it with, since both sit on the same crepe sole. The difference is construction: the Desert Boot is an ankle-height two-eyelet boot with a conventional upper, while the Wallabee is a moccasin, meaning the upper wraps under the foot with the apron stitched on top, which is what gives it the rounder toe and the softer feel. Both then did something Clarks had no hand in. In Jamaica they became a fixture of dancehall and reggae culture, held in enough regard that a book was written about it. In New York hip-hop adopted the Wallabee early enough that it still reads as a reference rather than a revival. British mods wore them, then Britpop did. The newer icon, Torhill, puts the Wallabee's moccasin toe on a heavier sole drawn from the brand's nineties profiles. Over 22,000 styles have come out of Street since the beginning, and these are the ones people name.