A letter from a reader

At 63, I own my first piece of leopard print, and it is a pair of slippers

Let me get one thing out of the way before I start. I am not a writer. I have never written anything longer than a birthday card that anybody was meant to read, and telling other women what they ought to wear, even around their own house, has never once been my business.

But three different women asked me about my slippers at our Thursday bridge afternoon, around my own dining table, and I have now explained the whole thing enough times that it seemed simpler to sit down and write it out once, properly.

It started, as these things do, with the old pair giving up. I had a pair of flat gray slippers I had worn for so long the insides had gone shiny and the backs had folded flat. When I finally admitted they were done, I did what I always do. I found something almost identical in gray and put it in the cart. My sister Sue was sitting beside me with her glass of iced tea, and she looked at the screen, and then at me, and said it.

You have bought that same gray pair your whole life. Get the leopard ones.

I laughed at her. And then I sat there for a minute, because she was not wrong. I could not remember one single time, in sixty-three years, that I had bought anything with leopard print on it. Not a scarf, not a bag, nothing. I had somehow decided, without ever actually deciding, that it was not for women like me.

So I ordered them. The coffee brown leopard ones, in my size, while Sue watched me do it so I could not quietly change it back to the gray.

How it happens

I have thought about it since, because it is a strange thing to reach my age and be nervous about a slipper.

Somewhere along the way, everything made for the house, for women our age, turned the color of oatmeal. Gray, beige, a dusty pink if they were feeling adventurous. Comfortable things, sensible things, and every one of them designed on the quiet understanding that nobody was going to see you in them anyway.

And that is the trap of it. The house is where nobody sees you, so it becomes the place you stop bothering. You would not go out in tired old things, but at home, somehow, tired old things are all you wear. Nobody decides that. It happens one sensible gray purchase at a time.

What I had wrong

I thought leopard print was for being looked at. That was my whole objection, though I had never once said it out loud. It felt like something you wear in order to be noticed, and being noticed was not something I was after.

It turns out I had it back to front.

The point of a bit of leopard on your feet at ten past eight in the morning, with the coffee going and nobody else in the house, is not who sees it. It is what it does to you. It is the difference between shuffling to the kitchen in something worn out and walking in wearing something you actually chose. Nobody warned me a slipper could do that, which is a good part of why I am writing this down.

They are called the Cecilia

They are from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now.

The slippers are called the Cecilia. An open toe house slipper with one wide, soft leopard print band across the top of the foot, in a warm coffee brown, sitting on a neat black sole. They do a white, a pink and a gray as well, but the coffee brown is the one, and I say that as somebody who has bought gray her whole life.

They slip straight on. There is no heel to pull up and no fastening to bend down for, which first thing in the morning matters far more than I ever thought it would. The band across the top is soft and holds your foot without gripping it, and the open toe means your feet never get that hot, bothered feeling in the evening once the heat comes on.

And they are, I will just say it, pretty. I did not expect that to matter in a slipper. It does.

What happened at the bridge afternoon

It was my turn to host bridge, which I do every third Thursday, and I did not think twice about what was on my feet, because you do not, in your own dining room.

Barbara noticed before she had even sat down. She has played at my table for eleven years and in all that time has never once commented on a single thing I own, and she put her purse on the chair, looked at my feet, and said, well, look at you. Then Donna wanted to know where they were from, and by the time we finished the first rubber all three of them had asked, and I had my phone out showing them the website when I should have been dealing.

What I noticed afterwards was smaller than the compliments, and better. I stopped kicking them off at the door of every room the way I did with the old pair, as though they were something to be got out of. I make the coffee in them, I read in them, I answered the door for the mail carrier in them without a flicker. In about three weeks they have become the most worn thing I own.

Sue, naturally, has claimed all the credit. I have ordered her a pair for her birthday and I am telling her nothing.

Three things I have learned since

One. The sizing is straightforward. They run from a US 5.5 all the way to a 12.5, and mine fit exactly as my shoes do. I wish more places would keep it that simple.

Two. You do not have to be brave all at once. A slipper, it turns out, is the gentlest possible place to try a print you have spent your whole life walking past. Nobody sees them unless you want them to, and by the time somebody does, you will have stopped noticing they are bold at all.

Three. Comfortable and cheerful are not opposites. I had filed leopard print under silly and gray under sensible, and I was wrong on both counts. These are the most comfortable slippers I have had, and they are also the only ones that have ever made me smile at my own feet.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Cecilia is $31.95. It was $64.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because a decent pair of house slippers can cost more than that just about anywhere these days. There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they have a sale on at the moment with the first of the fall stock.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it all the more. One woman from Bandera had written that she thought they might be a bit much for her and was now mad she had waited so long, because the print cheers her up every single morning. That was the one that decided it for me.

Then I ordered the pair for Sue.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting at my kitchen table and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If there is a print or a color you have been quietly walking past for forty years because somewhere along the way you decided it was not for women like us, start where nobody is watching. Start with your feet, at home, with the coffee going. It is the lowest stake there is, and it is not nothing. I can promise you it is not nothing.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And the first fall stock is already going, so if you are tempted, I would not sit on it the way I sat on the whole idea for sixty-three years.

I am 63, and it turns out I am a leopard print woman after all.

Peggy