Last week Jesse Mulligan spoke to a man who managed to sell 3 left jandals on TradeMe for $190, which led to many people sharing their love of the rubber summer footwear.
Jandals are just as popular in Australia, where they are called thongs, and Australian fashion historian Lydia Edwards has taken a deep dive into the history of the jandal.
Photo: supplied
Edwards speaks to Summer Times from Edith Cowan University in Perth where the weather is so hot her jandals are on 24/7.
“We’re getting up to 40C, you need them for sure.”
She was drawn to studying the jandal because of its iconic stature in Australia.
“When you’re looking at the history of fashion, you’re always keen to know where these things came from, whether they actually are from the place they’re associated with which, in the case of the jandal/thong is not actually Australia.”
Jandals have their origin in Ancient times from Greece and Rome to China, Africa, Korea and Japan, Edwards says.
“[This style of footwear] actually hails from those countries. Even in hieroglyphics, there’s Egyptian art of people wearing thong-like shoes. It does go back a very long way.”
The country with the earliest and deepest connection to the jandal is Japan.
“They have two [shoe styles] that fit very much what we would see now as a jandal: the zori and the geta.”
It’s not exactly clear when the jandal took off in Australia but Edwards says it was probably in the 1950s.
Japanese people wore jandals in Hawaii when they went there to work in the late 19th century. From there, the style migrated to amongst other places, California where it became popular with surfers.
“Surfers were known as flip-flops in California. It coincided with the time Australians were trying to develop itself as a tourist destination following World War II… the thong shoe became something that was seen on images of people at the beach.”
If there’s one thing New Zealand can claim, though, it’s the word 'jandal', Edwards says. Although it’s only really in use here.
It’s believed the word was devised by a businessman who had the idea to combine the words 'Japan' and 'sandal'.
