For: DJ House Shoes For: Peter Slipper

Domestic Footwear Customs

Slippers are frequently made out of soft materials such as felt, terrycloth or soft leather, and may or may not be lined. Some slippers, particularly those meant to be used near pools, bathrooms, or other wet places, are made of plastic or rubber. Slippers generally have thin and flexible soles, with a shallow tread meant only to prevent the wearer from slipping on smooth floors. In contrast, shoes and boots are generally made of canvas, plastic, rubber, or leather, and often have thick soles.

Slippers may be shaped like a shoe (foot inserted through top), or may have no heel, so the foot can be slipped in the back. They now come in many colourful designs  cartoon characters, patterns and animals are often used to decorate this type of footwear.

In Japan, one type of modern slipper evolved from those made during the Meiji period (1868 to 1912). The Japanese were accustomed to taking off their shoes before entering their homes and donning slippers at the threshold  this was not the case for western cultures, where customs regarding domesticity differed and slippers were mainly worn by a home's residents in the evening. For the Japanese it was problematic for foreigners who did not know or follow their customs to enter homes with their shoes on. Thus, special slippers were made for the foreigners to pull over their shoes in order to keep the indoors sanitary. Such slippers are in widespread use in Japan today by citizenry and gaijin alike. provide further demarcation between areas considered clean and unclean within the household itself.

Slippers also evolved much earlier in India. A Southern Song dynasty officer Zhou Qu Fei(1135-1189)，stationed in Quanxi province of China, described two types of slippers he saw in Jiaozhi (now Vietnam) in his 1178 book "Ling Wai Dai Da", both types of slippers had leather bottom, one type has a small post about an inch long with a mushroom shape top up front, people wore this slipper by holding the post between their toes; another type of slipper had a cross shape leather cover across the top of the leather bottom, Zhou noted that these slipper looked exactly like the slippers on the feet of arhats in some paintings. He noted further that the people of Kulam in Southern India wore a kind of red slipper which looked exactly like the slipper of arhats in painting.

Nicknames

The term "slipper" is sometimes used interchangeably with the terms flip-flop and sandal. This is especially true where footwear is not customarily worn indoors; in the Philippines, India, Malyasia, Singapore and Hawaii the word "slipper" generally refers to the sandal or flip-flop. This term can be used for sandals or flip-flops even though it is not truly "correct" per se.