Tag Archives: clogs

Crocs Finally Made a $100 Clog Worth Wearing in Cold Weather

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At some point in the last few years, Crocs quietly stopped being a punchline. Not because the brand suddenly changed who they were, but because the rest of the world caught up to the idea that comfort and design don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The Tembo II RO is one of the better arguments they’ve made for that case yet.

The shoe, if you want to call it that, is technically a clog. But calling it just a clog feels like calling a Patagonia fleece just a jacket. The Tembo II RO is built with the kind of materials you’d expect on outdoor gear, not a slip-on shoe from a brand that’s largely known for brightly colored foam and Jibbitz charms. That contrast is exactly the point.

Designer: Crocs

Crocs went back into their own archives for this one. The original Tembo dates to 2010, back when the brand was experimenting with more outdoor-ready silhouettes that never quite found their moment. Fifteen years later, they’ve pulled it back out and rebuilt it from the ground up with two headline-worthy upgrades: a Vibram rubber outsole and a removable Polartec bootie liner.

The Vibram outsole alone is enough to make you take this seriously. Crocs introduced the partnership earlier with the Classic EXP Clog, but the Tembo II RO gets a redesigned tread pattern specifically engineered for traction in wet and icy conditions. Vibram makes the soles for mountaineering boots, trail runners, and serious outdoor footwear across the industry. Seeing that yellow octagon logo on a clog is a little funny the first time you notice it, but your brain adjusts quickly once you think about what it actually means for performance.

The Polartec liner is the detail that impressed me more, though. Polartec is the kind of material brand that works behind the scenes, the one whose fabrics end up inside Arc’teryx jackets, Patagonia layers, and even gear used by the U.S. military. Most people have worn something insulated with Polartec without ever knowing it. The Tembo II RO uses a removable bootie construction lined with it, which means this clog can handle cold in a way that the standard perforated design absolutely cannot. The holes around the toe box that make Crocs breathable in summer become a liability the moment temperatures drop, so the Polartec liner is less of a bonus and more of a necessity.

The whole thing fits into Crocs’ EXP line, a growing family of experimental styles that take archival silhouettes and give them genuine performance upgrades. The Classic EXP Clog and the Terre Tech Mary Jane are also part of it, and as a collection, the EXP line represents a real creative direction for the brand. It’s not gimmicky. It’s not a collaboration done purely for content. It feels like Crocs actually thinking about where a foam clog can go when you stop limiting it by what it’s always been.

At $100, the Tembo II RO isn’t expensive for what it is. Quality Vibram outsoles and Polartec insulation each carry their own pricing weight in the outdoor industry, so seeing both in a single shoe at that price point is worth noting. It launches August 27 in two colorways: “Orange Zing,” a saturated, traffic-cone orange that leans unapologetically bold, and “Elephant,” a muted gray that lets the silhouette do the talking. Both come with dark contrast outsoles that ground the look nicely.

The question that sticks with me is who exactly this shoe is for, and I think the answer is more interesting than the obvious one. Yes, it’s for people who already love Crocs and want a version they can wear past September. But it’s also for the people who haven’t seriously considered Crocs in years, the ones who wrote the brand off a long time ago and need a reason to look again. The Tembo II RO, with its outdoor credentials and genuinely considered construction, is a pretty convincing one.

The post Crocs Finally Made a $100 Clog Worth Wearing in Cold Weather first appeared on Yanko Design.

Tati Ferrucio’s Onda Clog Is the Most Geologically Correct Shoe Ever Made

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The Yeezy Foam Runner opened a strange and genuinely productive door in footwear design, proving that a monolithic, organically sculpted clog could capture serious cultural attention. Tati Ferrucio‘s Onda walks through that same door but ends up somewhere quite different. Where the Foam Runner borrows loosely from athletic heritage, the Onda goes fully geological, its dense flowing ridges reading more like layered sandstone strata than anything borrowed from a sportswear archive. The comparison is worth making once and then setting aside, because the Onda has its own logic and it holds together well on its own terms.

That logic starts with landscape. Ferrucio drew directly from waves, sand patterns, stone surfaces, and tree bark, treating nature as the original generative designer and asking what footwear would look like if it followed the same rules. The cutouts are sculpted voids, not punched holes, and the ribbing on the sole wraps continuously into the upper so there is no visual seam between base and body. It reads as a single carved object, the kind of thing you might find in a tide pool if tide pools produced wearable foam.

Designer: Tati Ferrucio

Ferrucio developed the Onda using Vizcom, an AI-assisted design platform that takes a designer’s sketch and generates a field of iterated possibilities rather than a single resolved outcome. The workflow is worth pausing on because it explains something about the result. The Onda does not look like a design that was decided in one session; it looks like a form that accumulated, the way sediment does, layer by layer under consistent pressure from the same directional force. Just FYI, Vizcom did not generate the design; Ferrucio directed it, feeding creative intention into each round of iteration and pulling the form toward her reference material until the surface stopped arguing with itself and settled into something coherent.

Positioned along the sides of the upper, the cutouts allow water and sand to escape when moving through wet or granular terrain, which is a functional requirement in a clog built for outdoor use. But structurally, they also reduce material mass without compromising the integrity of the upper, and visually, they create depth in the silhouette that a solid body would not have. The oval void near the heel is particularly well resolved; it sits inside the ribbed surface like a window cut into a canyon wall, framed by ridges on all sides, and gives the rear of the shoe a formal completeness that most clogs never bother to achieve.

Three colorways exist in the current lineup: a grey-blue that photographs like wet stone, a sand beige that almost disappears against the layered rock surfaces in the campaign imagery, and a sage green that reads somewhere between sea glass and weathered copper depending on the light. Each one is photographed in a context that suits it specifically, which is the kind of creative direction that signals a designer who thought carefully about what the object is actually communicating and to whom. The grey-blue sits on a rocky riverbed in shallow water. The beige is shot against sedimentary cliff faces in warm light. The green lands on dry sand with hard shadows. Every environment reinforces the geological reference without stating it out loud.

The Onda is a mere concept at this stage, developed in collaboration with Vizcom as a demonstration of what AI-assisted industrial design can produce when the designer maintains genuine creative authority over the process. Whether it goes into production depends on factors Ferrucio has not specified, but as a design object it makes a coherent and confident argument: that the clog format, for all its utilitarian plainness, has more formal ambition available to it than most brands have been willing to extract.

The post Tati Ferrucio’s Onda Clog Is the Most Geologically Correct Shoe Ever Made first appeared on Yanko Design.

These Official Squidward Crocs Will Repel Every Adult Woman In A 10-Mile Radius

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Do I have a problem with Squidward? Fundamentally, no. Emotionally, maybe. He could be less of a buzzkill, but he’s truly a model neighbor and a great employee at Krusty Krabs. But do I have a problem with Squidward-themed Crocs? Overwhelmingly. I’m a Croc evangelist for life, but these footwear are so incredibly niche I wouldn’t want to be caught dead wearing them. At the same time, I want to be around people who wear then just for the opportunity to judge them!

So, Crocs has been launching Spongebob-themed footwear to mark the launch of the latest movie, and while the company already unveiled Spongebob and Patrick-inspired clogs, they decided to keep the best (subjective, of course) drop for the absolute end. You see, the Spongebob and Patrick ones look fairly benign… but the Squidward clogs, dropped today, quite literally look like you’ve slipped your feet into a hole in Squidward’s skull. The details aren’t subtle at all. Each clog has an immaculate representation of Squidward’s face, with its skeptical stare and raised eyebrow, along with that nose only a mother can love.

Designer: Crocs

Let me reiterate. I love Spongebob as a franchise. I like Squidward as a character. But these shoes are, well, repellent to say the least. Don’t expect to score any ladies with these, but if you’re a diehard fan of the franchise, it’s entirely within your rights to collect these limited-edition pairs, and probably even wear them in support of the movie, which launches in May next year.

The entire croc is molded in the iconic Squidward pale green, with the strap being white and sporting an anchor symbol on the pivot-point. Available in unisex sizes, the shoes will officially hit the shelves on December 11th, with a price tag of $80. Am I talking smack about these shoes just so that I can convince enough people to NOT buy them so that I can get a shot at owning them? Probably, you’ll never know.

Also hitting the shelves tomorrow are the Spongebob and Patrick Star clogs, in their iconic colors and designs. The Spongebob one comes with arms on the shoes’ body, along with a belt running around the midsole to denote Spongebob’s iconic pants. The insole has Spongebob’s face printed on it, so the shoes look like him from the top. Similarly, even the Patrick Star ones come with Jibbitz that are typical to the starfish, like a rock, a minifigure of Patrick himself, a bottle of sunscreen, and a jar of mayo. The straps read Patrick’s famous lines ‘Is Mayonnaise An Instrument?’, and the midsole (like Spongebob) features the green and purple print from Patrick’s pants.

The post These Official Squidward Crocs Will Repel Every Adult Woman In A 10-Mile Radius first appeared on Yanko Design.

Level up your feet with the new Xbox Classic Controller Clogs

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Xbox and Crocs have found an unexpected sweet spot between gaming culture and lifestyle fashion, creating a collaboration that feels both humorous and oddly fitting. For years, Xbox controllers have shaped how players interact with their consoles, while Crocs have become the go-to footwear for effortless comfort. Now, the two brands have merged these worlds with a product that looks like it jumped straight out of a gamer’s wishlist.

The result is the Xbox Classic Clog, a limited-edition release that transforms the familiar Xbox controller layout into a fully wearable piece of footwear. It’s the kind of drop that instantly sparks curiosity, something playful enough to be a conversation starter while still holding the appeal of a genuine collectible.

Designer: Xbox and Crocs

The clogs mimic the look of an Xbox controller with surprising accuracy. Each pair features molded analog sticks, the D-pad, ABXY buttons, menu and share buttons, and even the iconic Xbox guide button positioned just as it appears on a real controller. These fixed-dimensional elements rise from the clog’s surface, creating a sculpted texture that’s unmistakably inspired by the gamepad. The design continues around the sides, where the clogs integrate bumper-like detailing, and the heel strap hinges display the Xbox logo. Even the footbeds get their own touch of gamer personality with “Player Left” and “Player Right” printed inside, giving the shoes a fun two-player theme.

Released today, the Xbox Classic Clog is priced at $80 and sold through the Crocs website. While the design leans heavily into novelty, the footwear retains the brand’s standard comfort features. They remain lightweight, water-friendly, buoyant, and quick to dry, with pivoting heel straps for a more secure fit. They’re also compatible with Jibbitz charms, and Xbox has introduced its own five-pack of themed charms for $20. This pack includes franchises such as Halo, Fallout, DOOM, World of Warcraft, and Sea of Thieves, giving fans a way to personalize their clogs with characters and symbols from some of Microsoft’s biggest titles. Unlike typical Crocs, the strap itself is designed to hold these charms, while the main upper remains focused on showcasing the controller layout.

The collaboration arrives as part of Microsoft’s growing interest in lifestyle products. Earlier in the year, the company released Windows XP–themed Crocs to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Microsoft, showing that this partnership with Crocs is becoming more than a one-off novelty. The Xbox Classic Clog continues this trend, embracing gaming nostalgia and translating it into something wearable, collectable, and immediately recognizable.

Because the release is limited, demand is expected to surge, especially since the launch coincided with the holiday shopping rush. For gamers, it’s more than just footwear—it’s a fun, unexpected extension of the Xbox brand, blending comfort, fandom, and a bit of humor into one product. Whether worn during long gaming sessions, used as lounge shoes, or displayed as part of a gamer’s setup, the Xbox Classic Clog stands out as a clever crossover that celebrates the culture surrounding the console while delivering the ease and comfort Crocs are known for.

 

The post Level up your feet with the new Xbox Classic Controller Clogs first appeared on Yanko Design.