Slippers

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

While many house and bedroom slippers of the mid-19th century are at least in part homemade, there were common manufactured types as well. This pair of boy's bedroom slippers is a miniature version of one of the standard men's types. It features an attractive cutout border at the throat in contrasting color and texture of leather, which is nicely set off with white topstitching. The cut of these slippers, with the front and back in separate pieces curving down to the sole at the center, is called "d'Orsay" after Alfred Guillaume Gabriel, Count d'Orsay (1801–1852), a French amateur artist and dandy, who popularized the style.

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