Alex’s Covid UGGs
What is the origin of your shoes?
My husband bought me these UGG boots around six years ago. They turned out to be the shoes I wore, pretty much solidly, during the COVID Pandemic, so they became very well-worn and had started to develop holes.
What do they signify?
These shoes symbolise the isolation experienced during COVID, as well as the reassuring feeling of being at home and comfortable. COVID was a difficult time for everyone. For our family, I was pregnant with our second child, Jude, who was born in July 2020, when Melbourne introduced mask mandates. When we left the hospital, we were told we had to wear masks outside. As the most locked-down city in the world during COVID, the first two years of my son’s life were spent mostly at home, with little interaction with others. Those he did see were generally masked. My husband was categorised as an essential worker, so the kids were able to go to daycare, which I was hugely grateful for and helped me once I started working from home.
What did/do you love about them?
I love their associations with relaxation and comfort. In Australia, UGGs are mostly worn at home as slippers.
Is there anything you dislike about them?
These were quite revolting to deconstruct, with lots of dust and dog hair that had accumulated in the sheepskin. Interestingly, they didn’t smell at all, even though I wear them with bare feet, which is the benefit of natural, non-synthetic materials. After thoroughly cleaning the materials, I felt able to make them into something else - which was important, as one of my items was a hat to be worn on the head!
What do you think would happen to them if you didn't give them a second life?
Due to their disrepair, I could not have donated them. If I had, they would likely have ended up in a landfill. Therefore, I would have either just chucked them in the bin or put them in a ‘Save Our Soles’ collection bin to be ground up and downgraded for use as floor matting or similar products, which only prolongs the waste. I hate that there are very few solutions for shoes at the end of their lives. The infrastructure isn’t yet available for recycling at scale, and shoes are a long way from becoming part of a circular system.
What did you construct from them and why?
I had been wanting to use a pair of my own shoes for our ‘this is not a shoe’ activity for a while. At the time, I upcycled them into a hat (taking inspiration from Schaparelli’s surreal shoe hat). I was working on a teaching collaboration with the company that produces them. Pennie made the soles into a necklace and earrings, and we exhibited them at the Uncertain Endings Melbourne Fashion Week exhibition in 2025, curated by colleagues Julia English and Remie Cibis. I loved every part of the process, which led to this exhibition for the Melbourne Fashion Festival’s Independent program in 2026.
