I stumbled upon this code somewhere (I want to say after watching Green Room). People would use the different color laces in their Doc Martins to express their views on race or capacity for violence (blue means you’re a cop killer, for example) to people in the punk world. Is it still popular and/or recognized?
The only people I ever saw in the US that ever used that “code” were skinheads. I thought they were dumb at the time (mid 80s) for that and various other things. At least that code was something dumb they did that you could laugh at.
I have not seen anyone wearing Docs for some time*, and I have never heard of the “lace code”.
- my wife has a pair, but rarely wears them.
I saw someone (female, around 30, not a skinhead) wearing Dr. Martens just last week. They are still being made and sold.
ETA: the laces on drmartens.com consistently seem to match the color of the shoes: black for black boots, brown for brown boots, yellow for yellow suede shoes, etc.
That link does not have a URL…
I thought the important thing was which ear you had your laces in.
Oh, SHOELACES. For some reason I was picturing skinheads walking around with doilies hanging out of their shoes. Which would be much more hilarious.
Our family were lace-curtain skinheads, not those shanty skinheads.
Me, too. I thought, man that’s bold!
They are back in fashion, 16-18 yr old girls are into the 8 lace holes, black leather, thick soles.
I want to buy some but as an ageing male - and my last Doc Martens only lasted about a year - this seems unlikely. I don’t particularly rate them for quality, but steel toes do have some advantages. I dropped a pool table on mine and did not have any crush injuries.
Eh, some of us came in here hoping the thread would be about stuff like the Bruges color code for bobbin lacemaking or Zeena Parkins’s project for interpreting lace patterns in musical notation. Life is full of disappointments! 
I once toured a artsy glass blowing shop, and the artsy woman working was wearing DMs, I thought, yeah, this is style meets function.
I thought they were talking about wartime espionage using knitting to transmit informaton.
I just have to add a data point: I was born in 1968 in Germany so I came of age in the eighties, and back then I heard about the Doc’s lace code, something to sort out the fascist skinheads from the “good”, ska-loving skinheads and the punks. I never was into the scene, but the meme about the code existed back then.
Meh. Nowhere near as complex and convoluted as bandanas in a back pocket.
~VOW
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