As with many illicit affairs, official censure only heightened the passion of Clarks collectors in Jamaica. When Clarks introduced the Wallabee (a boxier, moccasin-inspired version of the suede chukka) in 1967 and the Desert Trek (a center-stitched hiking shoe, instantly rechristened as “bankrobbers” in Jamaica) in 1971, they practically flew off the stockists’ shelves straight onto the album covers of reggae’s most influential singers and DJs, dreadlocked Rastas and razor-trimmed lyrical gangsters alike. (Note the cover of dancehall pioneer’s Dennis Alcapone’s 1971 LP, Guns Don’t Argue, whereon Wallabees add a modish accent to a trenchcoat and Borsalino—not to mention machine guns—straight out of the Prohibition era of organized crime.)

clark boots Photo: Courtesy of Studio One

In the ’80s, the trend shifted from album-cover accessories to song lyrics and even titles (see Little John’s “Clarks Booty”), a high point of Clarks fetishism that coincided with the evolution of reggae into dancehall—and marked some of the genre’s all-time classics, like Super Cat’s “Trash And Ready” and Eek-A-Mouse’s “Wa-Do-Dem.” The era is lovingly documented in a new Greensleeves Records compilation titled simply Clarks in Jamaica and designed as a soundtrack to historian Al Fingers’s book of the same name. Fingers’s book is a visual bible of the phenomenon, chock-full of both priceless cultural lore and arresting photographs of reggae’s cultural heroes posed in an array of Clarks footwear, from Wallabees to discontinued variations like the Lugger and the Desert Mali. It moved northward as well, profoundly influencing a young subculture called hip-hop as Brooklyn Jamaicans made Wallabees and the similar silhouette of British Walkers a staple part of the b-boy uniform in New York City. Although Clarks’s star had dimmed somewhat by the ’90s, its cult status was kept alive by the unlikeliest of musical champions, including the mod revivalist devotion to the original Desert Boot exhibited by Liam Gallagher of Oasis, not to mention Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, aka the Wally Champ, who channeled his unrequited love for the ’80s Jamaica-to-Brooklyn look into a rainbow of hand-dyed colorways.

clark boots Photo: Jamel Shabazz / Getty Images

It took dancehall reggae’s reigning king Vybz Kartel to transform that die-hard cult following into a viral feeding frenzy (a craze that has helped push the shoemaker’s bottom line over the £100 million mark) when his young protégé Popcaan asked him with breathless admiration, “Whe’ you get yuh new Clarks deh, Daddy?” on a record in 2010. But by the time dancehall DJ Assassin proclaimed himself “Bad from Desert Clarks and diamond socks” in 2007, Jamaica had long since imbued the suede chukka, pants cuffed to expose argyle hosiery, the OG status that a pin-striped, double-breasted suit had for prewar dandies—a timeless, endlessly re-inventable signifier of dashing badassery.