Leonardo DiCaprio has had a pretty busy summer. Actually no, that's not true—it's not like he's spent these past three months crawling through muck and getting mauled by bears in Patagonia—but it has seemed that way because he's been in the news so much (by "the news" I mean "The Daily Mail"). He's been in between blonde girlfriends and spending most of the summer in New York City, so there's been an uptick in both the interest in his personal life and the opportunity for him to be photographed in public. Because of those two things, this is the most we've seen of Leo in a summer since 2014, when he ran around shirtless with a Supersoaker.
All Summer '16, we've seen Leo singlehandedly prop up NYC's bike-share program, leave a vape shop, get into a fender-bender in the Hamptons, surprise Jonah Hill on the street, embody creep-life next to a tree in Hudson River Park—the paparazzi photos have truly provided a wide scope of settings and activities. But there has been one constant.
HIS SHOES. HIS SLIP-ON SHOES. The hats change, the t-shirts vary, but the shoes remain the same.
Going green: Actor Leonardo DiCaprio was back on his Citibike in Manhattan after he and girlfri… https://t.co/mR7Kuif0ma @DailyMailCeleb
Leonardo DiCaprio running up to Jonah Hill pretending to be a fan taking pictures😂 pic.twitter.com/X6qnJMYRnF
Leonardo DiCaprio and his girlfriend Nina Agdal in Hamptons car crash https://t.co/8zwlw27obO pic.twitter.com/HUSrDociXq
Maybe it's just me, but I've been so extremely amused by the fact that an actor who made $29 million in 2015 is only wearing one pair of shoes (he may be Doug Funnie-ing it, but I kinda doubt it). And they're not even that nice! It's not like these slip-ons are $650 Ferragamo shits. As this summer has progressed, and as those shoes have continued to thrive on Leonardo's feet, my amusement has escalated into pure intrigue. I recently started digging, going through every paparazzi picture I could find. What I discovered was entrancing: it turns out this shoe situation goes way deeper than you or I could have ever expected.
Thanks to a website called StealHisOutfit, I was led to a brand called Rivieras, a French company that specializes in leisure shoes. Jackpot:
Those babies look like they really breathe—I really can't blame Leo for sliding into these every day during this hot New York summer. And at the affordable price of $75? You can't beat that. (Just FYI, I emailed Rivieras to see if they have an official relationship with Leo. They didn't respond to me.)
As I continued to go through pictures of Summer Leo, I found that the actor doesn't only rock the grays pictured above. He's got black ones, navy ones, red and blue ones, gray and navy ones. And to be more specific, he only wears them for daytime excursions—at night, he usually slips into Bottega Venetas. Then I came across a Dec. 2015 story on the Daily Mail with the very Daily Mail-esque headline of, "Putting his best foot forward! Leonardo DiCaprio shops for casual sneakers during getaway to St. Barts," and my jaw dropped. OMG:
Photo Moment: Shopping #LeonardoDiCaprio on the island of St. Barts , 27.12.2015 https://t.co/dkgr2qroH2 … pic.twitter.com/QOezl1dYl6
Just look at all those slip-ons, Leo must've lost it. That's slip-on heaven. Is that pair in Leo's hands patient zero, the beginning of a beautiful romance between a famous man's feet and a shoe? I like to imagine an employee approaching Leo like, "May I help you with anyth—" and before he could even finish his sentence, Leo yelled, "I WILL PURCHASE YOUR ENTIRE STORE."
But alas, the fantasy was only just that. I kept clicking into past stories, and kept finding photos of Leo wearing the Rivieras. There they were, in pictures of Leo riding CitiBikes with Jonah Hill in Sept. 2015, boarding a yacht with then-girlfriend Kelly Rohrbach in St. Tropez in July 2015, being very uninterested in then-girlfriend Toni Garrn's neck kisses in Sept. 2014. It's not until April 12, 2014 that the shoes stop showing up, which actually feels right, considering that was the day that gave us one of the most important Leo-in-the-wild moments ever:
It feels like I'm floating while fight-dancing with my bros, Leo said to himself. I will exclusively wear these for the rest of my life.
This is a true love story, an epic saga. Leo's Rivieras collection has seen him go from Oscar also-ran to Oscar-winner, from Toni Garrn to Kelly Rohrbach to Roxy Horner to Nina Agdal (those are names of blonde models, btw). They've been there for the rise of Trump, like six Future albums, and for unbelievable advancements made in vaporizer technology. They're really part of what makes Leo, LEO, a perfect symbol of his eternally relaxed, fully DGAF, slightly immature personality. If you want to understand the actor, you need to understand his shoes.
Thankfully, now you do.
