There’s this endlessly memed photo of Nicole Kidman, supposedly snapped right after her divorce from Tom Cruise in 2001, that's pure noughties nostalgia. In it, the then-34-year-old actress epitomizes the throes of bliss: face glowing, almost euphoric, and arms slightly lifted, mid-motion into a full-body exhale of relief. For two decades, the buzz surrounding the photo has been about Kidman’s presumed post-marriage glow-up and whether it was staged or not. (She claims that it was.) The conversation, instead, should’ve been about those shoes she wore with her carefree patterned blouse and green capris: a pair of low-top Camper Pelotas in nubuck leather.
The durability of this ugly-cool shoe comes from its cat-like ability to live many lives. In the ‘90s, the hardy but sleek Pelotas was a go-to for comfort-minded A-listers as disparate as Kidman, Robert Redford, and comfort god Steven Spielberg, a famous fan of life's finer footwear. By the 2010s, the shoe found a quiet place in the normcore canon as one of the quintessential “plain” sneakers. Its latest incarnation? The Pelotas has become a favorite of some of the most stylish runway-agnostic folks in fashion. To these people, the Pelotas delivers something both desirable and elusive: it's neither a sneaker nor a dress shoe, and – most importantly, it's normal in exactly the right way.
First launched in 1995, the Pelotas is made instantly recognizable by its rotund leather upper and outsole made of 87 rubber “pelotas,” or “balls,” in English. Thirty years later, they’re the footwear equivalent of an Opinel pocket knife, Technics turntable, or Falke socks: Unfashionable and unbeatable. A big part of the Pelotas’ appeal surely has to do with their price-quality ratio: a modern Pelotas Ariel is made in Portugal from European vegetable-tanned calfskin leather and retails for around $250 . (Of course, good-condition vintage pairs are easy to find for a fraction of that price.)
Mind you, such footwear is surprisingly rare.
“When it comes to comfortable, simple, no-logo shoes, it’s about not looking where everybody else is already looking,” says Hampus von Hauswolff, head buyer at Stockholm’s Nitty Gritty. This explains abrupt hype for shoes as disparate as Scarpa’s Mojito, Mephisto’s Match, and Aurora’s Middle English. The Pelotas is next.
At Paris Fashion Week this past June, I spotted Saager Dilawri wearing them under a Comoli pinstripe suit. Dilawri, owner of tastemaking Vancouver boutique Neighbour and one of the world’s sharpest buyers, bought his black pair with contrast stitching from the Camper store in Paris. Their appeal, he says, lies in their incognito character. “There’s not much visible branding or distinguishable feature to tell what shoe they are or what brand they’re from,” Dilawri explains.
Hugo Edwards, one of Dilawri’s pals who works with much-hyped slow-burning Danish brand mfpen, also wears the Pelotas. “I like how they’ve always been there, without trying to stand out,” he says. Edwards bought a pair on eBay this summer and barely took them off through autumn, inspiring an obsessive hunt for “the rarest iterations and colorways.”
Maxime van Middendorp, Head of Atelier at Camiel Fortgens, also got hers secondhand. “When I was a kid, my mom used to wear Pelotas,” van Middendorp says. “I didn’t like them at all back then, but recently I’ve begun to see them differently and got a pair in red, brown, and cognac. They go with everything.”
There’s nothing fancy about the Pelotas. As it happens, that’s exactly what makes it so desirable. It’s why cool folks recommend them to friends tired of sneakers and loafers, and just want a really good, maybe slightly weird, comfortable shoe.
The Pelotas turned 30 years old in 2025. To celebrate, Camper issued the original Pelotas shapes in all-black leather and collaborated with BONNE, a niche Amsterdam brand that specializes in go-anywhere, do-anything workwear suits. The Pelotas feels like a worthy match for BONNE’s utilitarian cotton-twill two-pieces, because they are, in founder Bonne Reijn’s own words, “functional yet unconventional.” That hits the mark. Because of this utilitarian appeal, the Pelotas has been around for decades, and probably will exist for at least a few more. It’s just that, at the moment, they’re also kinda cool.
