A slipper is a light shoe worn indoors.
They keep feet warm. People also wear them to keep their feet or socks clean. They are usually made of a something comfortable like a towel material or thin leather. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
The recorded history of slippers can be traced back to the 12th century. In the West, the record can only be traced to 1478.
Slippers in China date from 4700 BCE. They were made of cotton or woven rush, had leather linings, and featured symbols of power, such as dragons.
Native American moccasins were also highly decorative. Such moccasins showed nature scenes and were decorated with beadwork and fringing, their soft sure-footedness made them good for indoors taking (or setting aside). Inuit and Aleut people made shoes from smoked hare-hide to protect their feet against the frozen ground inside their homes.
Beautiful Orientalism saw the introduction into the West of designs like the baboosh.
Victorian people needed such shoes to keep the dust and gravel outside their homes. For Victorian ladies, slippers gave an opportunity to show off their needlepoint skills and use embroidery as decoration.
Types of slippers include:
Some slippers are made to look like something other than a slipper and are sold as a novelty item. The slippers are usually made from soft and colorful materials and may come in the shapes of animals, animal paws, vehicles, cartoon characters, etc.
Not all shoes with a soft fluffy interior are slippers. Any shoe with a rubber only and laces is a normal outdoor shoe. In India, rubber chappals (flip-flops) are worn as indoor shoes.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article Slipper, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki Simple English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.