Glass Slippers, Yes... SLIPPERS

Glass slippers, yes... SLIPPERS

Whenever the “verre VS vair” debate is brought up, glass shoes or fur shoes, something is pointed out. It is extremely funny that people seem unwilling to accept the “glass” part of the shoes (which in itself is not something weird, especially since as other people pointed out there is a lot of glass in fairytales, up to entire glass mountains) ; but blindly accept and never contest a much more puzzling and weirdest part of the item. “Slippers”. Glass “slippers”.

In French “pantoufle de verre”. The shoes you see in every modern Cinderella iteration are not “pantoufles”. They’re high-heeled shoes, they’re shoes to go outdoor, they are not “slippers”/”pantoufles”. And the very decision of making Cinderella wear “pantoufles” to her ball seems very strange… 

A “pantoufle”/”slipper” (for the sake of simplicity I’ll use the French pantoufle from now on) is not a ball shoe, and certainly a strange choice to go to the ball. A pantoufle is a comfortable “inside shoe”, worn usually inside the house (or sometimes even just in bedrooms), and often the pantoufle was opened up at the back, leaving the heel uncovered. That’s the kind of slipper the 1950s dad wears alongside his pajama robe when he gets out of the house with a pipe in his mouth to go searching for his journal. A quite unelegant and unusual shoewear for a formal ball organized by a prince. 

Maybe we can get some clues from looking at the history of the pantoufle? Let’s see…

The French pantoufle was originally inspired by the Arabian “babouche” (you know, the archetypal “Arabian” shoe you’ll see everyone wear in One Thousand and One Nights). Somehow the fashion of the “babouche” reached France in its Middle-Ages and became there “pantoufles”. Originally pantoufle were peasant and low-class shoes: made out of felt, they were not shoes per se but things people put on their feet when they wore clogs (what in France we call “sabots” shoes) so that it would be much more confortable (”sabots” being thick and hard wooden shoes). So basically it started out as the peasant equivalent of socks. 

But by the 15th century the “pantoufle” suddenly reached the upper-class where it became a true fashion, every gentleman had to wear some, usually made of silk or thin leather (those were costly shoes). These “pantoufles” were notably worn with a sole made of either wood or cork (”liège” as we call it in France), to avoid the pantoufle being dirtied by the muddy ground. 

In the 16th century, a new change to the “pantoufle” was made (which notably became confused and conflicted with another type of slipper known as “mule”). The “pantoufle” became feminized, to the point that it became at one point an exclusively “feminine” fashion, the “pantoufle” becoming womanswear.

Though it had exceptions: notably under the rule of Louis 14 (who was the king under which lived Perrault and whom he served), the servants of the royal palace had to wear “pantoufles” with felt soles for two reasons. 1) So that the sound of their constant travellings throughout the palace wouldn’t disturb the upper-class. 2) So that their shoes wouldn’t damage the floor. 

It was at the end of the 17th century (which is also the time Perrault wrote and published his fairytales) that women started to use “pantoufle” as proper shoes, not just glorified socks. They noted how light and practical and easy to slip on and wear those things were, and so they wore them all on their own - but only inside their house or in their private chambers, due to how fragile they were. As I said, “inside shoes”. 

So in conclusion, we know that in Perrault’s time the “pantoufle” were feminine footwear, traditional footwear of the royal court (but for servants), and fashionable enough to be worn on their own… But at the same time it was still an “inside shoe” of comfort and rest, and still stays a very unusual item to go to a royal ball with. They certainly were not easy shoes to dance with (not even counting how they were made of glass!). 

It is probably just another one of those details that Perrault liked to add to his fairytales just for the sake of having a form of humor in there. But it is fascinating to see how the “pantoufle”/”slipper” concept was rejected through time - in fact, even when people in the 19th century debated the “verre or vair” topic, they often called the shoes “soulier” (which is a type of outdoor shoe much closer to the ones popularized by modern adaptations than the indoor “slippers”, bedroom “pantoufles”).

All in all I can’t give you an answer, but it is an interesting detail that not many people took care of looking at (from my knowledge) ; or if they did, it was themselves to only point out how somehow nobody seemed bothered by the fact the shoes were slippers.