I did some digging and it turns out the answer is stranger than I thought.
Uggs were originally Australian in make and design, and the word “ugg” just refers to the style of boot here. Then some Australian fucker trademarked it in America and sold it to a massive American company in the 80s. Thus UGG became a brand. Americans recognise Ugg as a brand, and think it’s fashionable and cool to wear name-brand boots, while Australians just call every style of boot like that an Ugg and (as long as it’s real sheepskin) don’t tend to discriminate much.
Now that answers why Americans are so keen on the brand name, but there’s more.
What American law did was basically steal a generic term and style of shoe that had been used in Australia for decades, and then make it illegal for their competitors to use it as their own.
So their trademark means Australians cannot sell (Australian-made!) Uggs into the US. And there are legal battles occurring over the use of the term ‘ugg’. A delightful origin story of the term runs thus:
Australians have been making Ugg boots for half a century.
Graeme Spencer, who runs Huggy’s Ugg boot in South Australia, said it was his father Charlie Spencer who made the first Ugg boots and came up with the word Ugg.
“A customer of his came in and said they are the ugliest boots she had ever seen … And he just came up with U-G-G,” Mr Spencer said.
Australian senators are calling for the term ‘Ugg’ to be recognised as what it always has been - a generic term for footwear and not a brand name - because it bullies Australian manufacturers out of making their own product. Deckers, the brand owner, shuts down thousands of listings and chases out any trace of ‘counterfeit’ uggs (lmao). Even odder, in their war on ‘counterfeits’, Deckers tries to convince people that buying fake uggs basically equals supporting terrorism.
Australian Leather owner Eddie Oygur is seeking a separate ruling in Australia that Deckers is guilty of deceptive conduct, by trading under the name Ugg Australia when the company is based in California and its Ugg boots are made in China.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is considering the matter.
Mr Oygur has also asked the ACCC to investigate the Deckers’ website which warns consumers who buy so-called “fake” Ugg boots, not made by Deckers, that they could be supporting terrorism, mobsters or gangs.
The Ugg website states that “infamous terrorist groups, organised crime rings, and gangs such as the … Camorra … Chinese triads .. Russian mafia, Al Qaeda and Hezbullah finance their operations — including terrorism, drug, sex, and arms trafficking — through the sale and trafficking of counterfeits”.
I’ve met the horrible, nasty people who make counterfeit uggs. Her name’s Barb and she works at the local market. Her husband sews the Australian sheepskin himself, and she attaches the soles. These evil counterfeiters are mostly just Australians making and selling footwear like they always did.
So the American obsession with “real uggs” that I mocked so unthinkingly is actually the story of how a huge American company took something generic from Australia, then trademarked the brand, sued the pants off anyone who tried to use the word they’d been using for years, then further branded themselves as Ugg Australia even though it’s based in California and made in China, and started scaremongering to make people believe that ‘counterfeit uggs’ are evil, as if non-brand name sheep boots are on the same level as triads and the mafia, when it’s just Barb’s husband sewing in a shed.
The world is a rich tapestry.
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