Clover by Rocketdog

Madras in the Grass: Rocketdog's sunny plaid loafer is summer incarnate.

Every once in a while a shoe just captures our heart, holds it hostage and demands an exorbitant ransom. Yes, the Clover by Rocketdog is like a scrappy band of Somali pirates and we, their unsuspecting foreign superfreighter. Fortunately for us, the Clover is a simple pirate, demanding only $34.00 instead of the millions requested by its fellow-buccaneers.

We will now drop that metaphor. We will retain a certain image of the sea, maybe just of the lake or even a pool because these Madras beauties are summer in a shoe! We just can't get over how bright and cheerful they are. Some shoes we love for their killer look, or how killer they make us look. And some shoes ... well, some shoes just make us smile. And a shoe that makes us smile is a shoe we want to wear. And so easy! The insole is fabric over foam that sits on top of a burlap sole – think huaraches – and lined with braided hemp rope. There’s nothing fancy here, but what we get works like a charm.

Fancy, no, but dull? Hardly. Here we have the trends of the moment – natural materials, neutral colors – and an absolute riot of color. For being a simple slip-on, Clover’s a bit of a workhorse. Casual construction – reversed seams on the toebox, gusseted heelcup for easy donning – brings to mind similar outfits. Casual. Easy. On the shore of our sea/lake/pool vision we now see us in whites, polos, flimsy slubbed tees (dare we say sweater sets??) drinking fanciful gin drinks, our Rocketdog Clovers kicked into the seagrass.

Shifting gears from lawless pirates, there's a Gilded Age Adirondacks or latter-day Hamptons kind of screaming preppiness about the Clover that, frankly, we love. Call it East Coast. You can wear it with pretty much anything seeing how the whole of ROYGBIV is represented in the pattern (though the overall cast is somewhat on the cooler, which is to say BIV, side).

Clover’s not for the office and definitely nothing we would wear out on the town (unless that town were an exotic island resort with sand and palm trees and complexly concocted cocktails served in coconuts), but we’d slip it on for just about anything else. Clover’s for, well, the clover – hit the beach, take a walk, bring these cuties with you. Who knows? Someone may see them on you and have their own heart hijacked by the little scrappers.