This Is The Year You Get Into Slippers

The fuzzy backless slippers most guys swear by are cozy, sure, but they’re best suited for lazy Sunday mornings and going no further than your front door (or however far your newspaper lands from it), Tony Soprano-style. But there’s another kind of slipper out there and it’s made for Saturday nights as well as the most formal function you’ll ever get invited too (along with trips to the supermarket, casual weddings, and cross-country flights, if you’re so inclined.) We’re talking the fancy kind of slippers, most often—but hardly exclusively—offered up by big-time designer brands that turn the streamlined, almond-toe silhouette into a canvas for all kinds of tricked-out, eyeball-grabbing touches. You know the stuff: wild patterns (paisley, leopard, camo) and out-of-the-ordinary finishing touches (punk-ish studs, tassels, embroidered animal heads). Style rebels like Lapo Elkann and Donald Glover swear by the style (the latter most recently at this weekend’s Grammy awards). Before Kanye West became the king of sweatpants and fat sneakers, he was a slipper man. Wiz Khalifa never met a designer slipper he didn’t like, and even Diplo has been known to get down with the flashier footwear on a red carpet or two. Sure, they’re definitely still the shoe of choice for every bloated rich guy on holiday in the south of France—but that’s the point. They’re as old-school elegant as they are delightfully obnoxious (a.k.a. what menswear looks like in 2018), and uncommon in every way—which is precisely why they belong in your footwear arsenal right now. Read more at GQ.