Tartan, monogram, moccasin, clog. What do your slippers say about you? Trick us all you like with your office Manolos, your Loake loafers, your Louboutin mules, it’s the shame-making slippers that will tell us the truth. Fleece-lined slob or kittenish slip-on? Millennial Mahabis or ancestral tapestry? Japanese zori or plaited huarache?
In George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, when Henry Higgins returns from the opera and exclaims ‘I wonder where the devil my slippers are!’ the stage directions note: ‘Eliza returns with a pair of large down-at-heel slippers.’ In My Fair Lady they become, under Cecil Beaton’s instruction, a pair of black velvets. Though admittedly it’s difficult, as Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle hurls them at him, to get a good look: ‘Here are your slippers! And there! Take your slippers and may you never have a day’s luck with them!’
These boots were made for walking… and these slippers were made for working from home.
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