I have unwrapped sensible slippers for forty Christmases. These are the first ones I have ever written a letter about.
I have unwrapped sensible slippers for forty Christmases. These are the first ones I have ever written a letter about.
Six things I have noticed since an iced-in December morning in the Texas Panhandle, from a woman who spent two days in her socks on a motel floor.
Peggy Dalton · Customer · Austin, Texas · 5 min read
I am Peggy, I am 63, and I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband Frank. I am not a fashion person and I have never once been asked my opinion on footwear. What I can tell you is that I have been given a pair of slippers every Christmas for forty years, first by my mother and then by Frank, and that nearly all of them were beige. They were perfectly good. I could not pick a single one of them out of a lineup.
The ones I am writing about are Christmas house slippers from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now. Mine are the Merry, in red, with a plush green Christmas tree on each toe and a little yellow star on top. The other pair I will tell you about is the Rudy, a soft white slipper with a smiling reindeer in a Santa hat, which is wrapped in my closet right now with my sister’s name on it. There are six designs in the collection, trees and Santas and that reindeer, and I have looked at all of them more than once.
Here is how I found them. The week before Christmas last year, Frank and I were driving up to Amarillo to see his brother Dale. We got as far as Tulia. Ice had come down across the Panhandle that afternoon, the troopers closed the interstate, and we took one of the last rooms at a motel by the highway. We were there two nights. I had packed my good black shoes for Dale’s church and the loafers I drove up in, and that was all. That motel had a tile floor I can still feel. By the first morning I was padding down to the breakfast room in two pairs of socks, with my feet so cold they hurt.
The picture I took. She had sat down with her waffle by the time I worked up the nerve, and I sent it to my sister Sue from the breakfast table.
There was a woman about my age at the waffle iron, stranded like the rest of us, and on her feet were the most cheerful things I had seen in a week. Bright red and fluffy, thick white soles, and on each toe a green Christmas tree with a yellow star. She was not wearing them as a joke. She was just making a waffle. Her name, I found out over the syrup, is Maxine, from up around Dumas, and she told me she never travels in winter without them. Now, I do not speak to strangers about their feet. But I had been cold for sixteen hours. So I asked her where she got them, plainly, and then I asked if I could take a picture, which is not a sentence I ever expected to say in a motel.
Two piles
I have been around slippers for forty Christmases, and what is out there falls into two piles. There is the sensible slipper, beige or gray, which is warm enough and which nobody on this earth will ever look at, including you. And there is the gag gift, the one from the drugstore rack with a felt reindeer glued on, which gets a laugh on Christmas morning and is flat as a tortilla by New Year’s. Somewhere along the way I had decided the second pile was for grandchildren and the first pile was for me. I do the tree, the cooking, the stockings and the wrapping. Christmas had become a thing I did for other people, in beige.
For forty Christmases I chose between warm feet nobody would look at and a joke nobody would wear twice. Maxine had a Christmas tree on each foot and was making a waffle.
The afternoon they came. I set them on the bed to look at them, and then I put them on and left them on.
I ordered mine on my phone that night, sitting up in the motel bed with the heater rattling, and Frank asked me what was so funny. They were waiting on the porch not long after the New Year, well after we had gotten home. I wore them straight through to March, which I am told is not allowed, and I got them back out the first cool morning this fall. Going by all those mornings, it comes down to six things, and I will give them to you plainly.
They look like somebody meant it
This is what surprised me. On the Merry, the tree is a raised plush shape with its own little trunk, and the star stands up off the top, glossy and yellow. On the Rudy, the reindeer is worked right into the soft white upper, with brown antlers, a red nose and a Santa hat. Nothing is glued on crooked and nothing looks like it came off a rack by the register. They are playful, I will not pretend they are not, but they look like a slipper first and a joke not at all. Dale’s wife asked me where she could get some, and she has never asked me where to get anything.
I am 68 and I thought I was past this sort of thing. My husband looked down on Christmas morning and laughed, and then he said they suited me.
Linda R., HappyWarm clear through
The boutique says the plush upper and soft lining keep your feet snug and warm on chilly winter evenings, and that was the entire reason I had started this conversation. The Merry is fluffy on the outside and lined in soft green plush on the inside, so there is no cold spot where the top meets the toe. Our house in Austin sits on a slab and the kitchen floor in January is no better than that motel. I stand on it to make the coffee now and I do not think about it.
Our house is old and the wind comes under the door from Thanksgiving on. These are the first thing I reach for in the morning, before my glasses.
Carolyn B., KressA sole you can feel
Every slipper I have owned went flat by Valentine’s Day. The Merry has a thick, chunky white sole, puffy along the sides like a row of little clouds, and the boutique says it adds a comfortable lift and a cushioned feel while you lounge around the house. That is what it feels like. The Rudy has a lower, plainer cushioned sole, if you would rather stay closer to the floor. These are house slippers, I should say. I have not tested them on ice, and I will leave that to Maxine.
Up close, on my own kitchen floor. The star, the little trunk, and that cloud of a sole.
I wore mine all through the Christmas baking and my feet were the last thing I thought about that day. That is saying something in my kitchen.
Martha S., DimmittYou just step in
They are open at the back, so you slide your foot in and go. There is no heel to fold down and nothing to fuss with. When the grandchildren are at the house on Christmas morning and it is not yet six o’clock, the last thing I am going to do is hunt for a pair of shoes under the bed in the dark. I step down and they are right there, and I am in the kitchen before the first one gets to the tree.
I leave them by the back door and step into them every time I come in. I have stopped tracking the yard through my kitchen, which my husband has remarked on.
Judy K., HerefordFour sizes, and no guessing
They come in four sizes, from US 5-6 up to US 9.5-10.5, and each one covers a range. The boutique says they run true to size, so you simply choose your usual one. Mine fit the way a slipper should. It matters more than you would think if you are buying for somebody else, because you only need a rough idea of her shoe size, and most of us know that about our sisters whether they would like us to or not.
I bought four pairs for the women in my family and did not have to ask a single one of them for a size. I knew near enough, and they all fit.
Brenda H., FloydadaSix designs, and a present that gets worn
There are six in the collection: the Merry, the Evergreen with its baubles, the Rudy, the Festive with its Santa and pom poms, and two big Santa faces, the Jolly and the Noel. The boutique calls them a stocking stuffer or a Secret Santa present, and they would be, but I have gone further than that. This Christmas I have bought my sister Sue the Rudy. Sue is the one I sent that picture to from Tulia, and she texted back, you would never. She lives alone now, and she has had a beige year. I would like to see her open that box. The white one with the reindeer is the quieter of the two, if you are buying for a woman who has opinions.
The Rudy. I tried Sue’s on by our tree before I wrapped them. I am not sorry.
Mine and hers, side by side on the guest bed.
I got the reindeer ones for my mother, who is 89. She shows them to everyone who comes to the house, and she has told the mailman they are from her daughter.
Donna M., SilvertonThe Merry and the Rudy, against forty years of beige
You can have another pair of sensible slippers this Christmas, like I did for forty years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Beige, and forgotten by the time the paper was picked up
A drugstore gag gift, flat by New Year’s
A thin sole on a cold kitchen floor
Something to hunt for under the bed
Christmas for everybody else
A plush tree or a reindeer on every toe
Fluffy on the outside, soft lining on the inside
A cushioned sole with some lift to it
Open at the back, so you just step in
Six designs, and four sizes that run true
About the price
The Merry is $34.95, and it was $70.00. The Rudy is the same, and so is every pair in the collection, half what they were. I read the whole page twice looking for the catch, because I have bought enough things on my phone to know better. I have not found one. Shipping was free, they looked like the picture, and I put them on.
Sue’s, in the box on my kitchen table. The tag is still blank, because I have not decided how much to say about Tulia.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that these come in small runs for the season, and that the most popular designs go first, mostly before Christmas. Their words, not mine. What I would tell you, from my side, is not to leave it until the week before, the way I leave everything. I ordered mine in December and they came after the New Year, and I did not mind because they were for me. If yours are going under a tree, I would see to it now.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I went and read the reviews from that motel bed. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
If you have spent forty Christmases making it nice for everybody else, in slippers nobody would look at, or you have a sister or a mother or a daughter who has, this is where I would start. Take a look before your size sells through, because once this stock is gone, it is gone. And if you ever get iced in at a motel up on the Panhandle and you see two grandmothers at the waffle iron with Christmas trees on their feet, one of them is Maxine, and the other one is me.
Peggy
THE CHRISTMAS SLIPPER COLLECTION
- 6 designs, from the red Merry tree to the white Rudy reindeer
- Fluffy plush upper with a soft, warm lining
- Cushioned sole, open back, slips right on
- 4 sizes, US 5-6 to US 9.5-10.5, true to size
- Free shipping
Sale on now, half off. Once this stock is gone, it is gone.