Hip slippers for him
Designer sneakers have been making a big noise in the echo chamber of men’s fashion the last few seasons. Now another shoe is gaining ground as a way for men to step out with some style mojo.
Dubbed the smoking loafer or the slipper, it’s long been familiar to denizens of preppy haunts such as Connecticut, the Hamptons and Palm Beach, usually seen with initials or an embroidered crest. Now it’s increasingly showing up in menswear collections and is being done by tony shoe labels, recolored and reworked in high style.
“You can wear just about anything with a slipper shoe,” says Saks Fifth Avenue Vice President Eric Jennings. “And with guys wearing their trousers a little more cropped, it looks great with a bare ankle and chinos.”
The slipper is surfacing in velvet or linen, even completely covered with studs. The point is to throw a sartorial wrench into what you’re wearing. With a Jimmy Choo slipper in zebra-print pony hair, a Del Toro pink pair with a “medicinal” motif or a summer-ready cobalt beaded skull from Giuseppe Zanotti, you can fly your fashion freak flag with jeans or walking shorts.
“Guys love a good joke or a conversation starter,” says men’s designer Michael Bastian, who teamed up with traditional slipper maker Stubbs & Wootton on special editions when he first started showing five years ago and has used them on his runway ever since. This season, they include Indian motifs and embroidered red scorpions, and, Bastian says, “the shoes are a little one-two punch.”