Evening slippers

Gundry & Sons

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The celebrity tie-in is not a new phenomenon to fashion. Merchants and makers have always been anxious to promote their products by their connections to the social elite. A small workshop could survive by local patronage and word-of-mouth referrals, but the increased volume and wider distribution of products generated by the Industrial Revolution necessitated the development of print advertising. Shoes are a particularly good example of this phenomenon, as they were one of the earlier items of apparel to bear labels. In this pair of slippers, the well preserved paper label makes full use of the maker's noble associations to promote the product, squeezing the names of four royal clients into the text. Also of note is it ribbon-striped vamp which enjoyed a period of fashionability in the 1840s.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art