The Stylish Made-in-France Hemp Clog

The Story Behind the Plasticana Gardana

One may first associate the clog with: klomp, wooden Dutch footwear that is considered symbolic of the country, geta, Japanese thongs that takes the form of an open-toed sandal, perhaps even paduka, a simple platform design from India featuring a single stub for grip, or even Crocs, the contemporary injection-molded boat shoe that has become the de facto off-duty shoe for millions around the world.

However, French name Plasticana is quickly amassing its own following from clog connoisseurs.

The Plasticana Gardana clog is a made-in-France gardening shoe crafted from a translucent hemp-derived material that gives the shoe its characteristic speckled caramel hue.

Slip-on, mule-style footwear is the unexpected category that has truly taken over during the last few years. Now that the aforementioned Crocs and backless shapes like Birkenstock Bostons have become commonplace, mule fans are journeying further down the proverbial rabbit hole. Plasticana clogs have been adopted and claimed as a Brooklyn street-style statement, despite the French brand never intending them to be so.

Plasticana’s trajectory into the fashion world may have started a few years ago when American fashion label BODE sent Gardanas down the Parisian runway for FW20. Brooklyn-based gardening purveyor Salter House and Plasticana stockist quickly became inundated with stylish New Yorkers seeking the hemp clogs, which have been an increasingly hot item for the mule-pilled. Salter House’s web shop contains the description “The Clogs feature an easy to slip on and off form that is ideal for gardening, cooking and pretty much anything else!” Salter’s eponymous co-founder Carson Salter (and old schoolmate of BODE founder Emily Adams Bode. Coincidence? Nope.) rightfully pointed out to GQ, “I want to take a little bit of credit that I think we helped to frame them as something that wasn’t just a pure granola product.”

Plasticana was established in 1998 by hemp lover and self-described environmental poet André Ravachol who was exploring plastic alternatives and enlisted the help of a lab that helped him mix recycled vinyl with hemp. The brand’s signature brown color comes from the sugars that naturally exist in hemp, which gives each shoe a slightly unique look. Plasticana does offer a second color, a dark green named “Vert,” which is created using additional dyes and therefore making it only slightly less friendly to the environment. Gardana clogs are also nonslip and waterproof, boosting the silhouette’s gardening credentials, and making them a reliable rainy-day choice from Le Marais to Williamsburg. Today, Ravachol maintains a blog on the Plasticana website where he re-shares press coverage, interviews, photos, and any online love that the brand receives.

Among the natural properties of hemp are its propensity for rapid growth and its ability to efficiently absorb CO2 at twice the rate of any forested area. With his eco-friendly material, Ravachol made a line of unisex waterproof footwear that included the Gardana clog as well as other crunchy silhouettes like jelly-style sandals, mules, clogs, Chelsea boots, and rain boots. Despite its newfound cool factor, the brand’s catalog remains affordably priced with the clogs priced at 49,95 EUR. As a testament to Plasticana’s roots, the brand is still widely stocked at gardening stores and florists, side by side with other backyard items like wind chimes and trowels.

Plasticana products are also wholly recyclable. Any of the brand’s styles can be broken down into granules “to be able to become a material again for future generations” as explained on the brand’s French website, with some help from Google translate.

Ultimately, the popularity of Plasticana, and any brand that makes the transition from functional design to style trend, comes down to its authenticity. André Ravachol unknowingly created a product that is begging to be discovered far and wide outside of the world of gardening footwear, following other functional products that have been recontextualized by the fashion community. With spring weather fast approaching, being a green thumb is no longer a strict prerequisite to slipping on a pair of Gardana clogs.