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Loafers are low, leather step-in shoes usually with moccasin construction, with broad flat heels. They first appeared in the mid-1930s. They have no shoelaces or buckles. Loafers are often worn in casual situations, but lace-up shoes such as Oxfords are still required for any more formal occasions.
The men's fashion and lifestyle magazine Esquire photographed dairy farmers in Norway wearing slip-on shoes around the cattle-loafing area, where dairy cows gather to wait for milking. The Spaulding family in New Hampshire started making shoes based on these photographs in about 1932 or 1933, naming them loafers. In 1934, John R. Bass (a bootmaker in Wilton, Maine) started making loafers and called them Weejuns (which was meant to sound like 'Norwegian'), which had a strap across the upper part of the vamp that was shaped like a pair of lips. The opening was sometimes used to hold an ornament (such as a penny), giving shoes with this type of tongue the name penny loafers.
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Loafers are worn by both sexes, although somewhat more often by men. Women's penny loafers also have many different styles. Wearing socks with loafers depends on the fashion trends of the time, and on the sex that wears them. Women have been wearing loafers with knee socks. By contrast, penny loafers were worn by men sockless. This fashion trend began in the 1960s on campuses, where male students did not wear socks at all, even in winter. During the 1970s, it became a "class style" for men to go dancing without socks. In the 1980s, it became the preppy look and, nowadays, it is a classicdubious to wear sockless loafers with jeans, chinos and a blazer (as noted in GQ magazine).
A particular type of penny loafer, the "tasseled loafer," has been stereotypically associated with attorneys.dubious
External links
- Definition of Penny Loafer (Google Translation from German)
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 21 November 2008, at 02:53.
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