February 20, 2007--Slippers
I’ve been wearing slippers my entire life and until today never realized they had an inventor. I assumed they had been around forever. Well, at least since Ancient Egypt—I’ve seen hieroglyphics which seem to depict humans with heads like crows’ walking around in what look to me like slippers. Or at the least, I always thought, slippers existed since the time when Marco Polo brought them back with him to Italy, along with spaghetti, from China.
But then there was this NY Times headline, “Florence Z. Melton, 95, Creator of Slippers, Dies,” and I became terribly confused. It appears that they were invented in just 1948 in Columbus, Ohio of all places. (See full obituary linked below.) And what a story it is.
At then end of World War II women continued to dress in a civilian version of military style. You know the look from old Joan Crawford movies—double-breasted suits with padded shoulders. But there was a problem with the padding: when cleaning the suit jacket the pads had to be removed and then sown back in. Lots of work for busy women. Mrs. Melton had a better idea—cotton pads, separate from the jackets, that could be attached to brassiere straps. She patented these and sold quite a few. But these too became a problem as washing machines began to proliferate—they were not machine washable.
From an article in Popular Mechanics (my favorite boyhood magazine), she read about the invention, during the war, of foam rubber and how it had been used in helmets. She wondered, could we make our shoulder pads out of foam rubber? It would undoubtedly be more comfortable than cotton and could likely be washed in machines. She made a deal with Firestone and, since she was right on both counts, business boomed.
Not one to become complacent, even in the face of success, on a drive back to Columbus from Firestone’s headquarters in Akron, Mrs. Melton said to her husband, “Aaron, you know what we ought to do with foam rubber? We ought to walk on it.” And from that insight, the slipper was born.
I should now reveal that her version of the slipper is the kind that perhaps you’ve seen your mother or grandmother wear. Not the type worn in Ancient Egypt, Renaissance Rome, or by me as I padded about our apartment in Brooklyn. Her slippers, Dearfoams, are the ones made out of fuzzy terrycloth, come in a wide variety of colors, have slightly raised heels, of course have foam rubber soles. And, yes, they are machine washable.
If you’re wondering—Dearfoams have sold more than 3 billion pairs worldwide. That’s a lot of grandmothers.
But then there was this NY Times headline, “Florence Z. Melton, 95, Creator of Slippers, Dies,” and I became terribly confused. It appears that they were invented in just 1948 in Columbus, Ohio of all places. (See full obituary linked below.) And what a story it is.
At then end of World War II women continued to dress in a civilian version of military style. You know the look from old Joan Crawford movies—double-breasted suits with padded shoulders. But there was a problem with the padding: when cleaning the suit jacket the pads had to be removed and then sown back in. Lots of work for busy women. Mrs. Melton had a better idea—cotton pads, separate from the jackets, that could be attached to brassiere straps. She patented these and sold quite a few. But these too became a problem as washing machines began to proliferate—they were not machine washable.
From an article in Popular Mechanics (my favorite boyhood magazine), she read about the invention, during the war, of foam rubber and how it had been used in helmets. She wondered, could we make our shoulder pads out of foam rubber? It would undoubtedly be more comfortable than cotton and could likely be washed in machines. She made a deal with Firestone and, since she was right on both counts, business boomed.
Not one to become complacent, even in the face of success, on a drive back to Columbus from Firestone’s headquarters in Akron, Mrs. Melton said to her husband, “Aaron, you know what we ought to do with foam rubber? We ought to walk on it.” And from that insight, the slipper was born.
I should now reveal that her version of the slipper is the kind that perhaps you’ve seen your mother or grandmother wear. Not the type worn in Ancient Egypt, Renaissance Rome, or by me as I padded about our apartment in Brooklyn. Her slippers, Dearfoams, are the ones made out of fuzzy terrycloth, come in a wide variety of colors, have slightly raised heels, of course have foam rubber soles. And, yes, they are machine washable.
If you’re wondering—Dearfoams have sold more than 3 billion pairs worldwide. That’s a lot of grandmothers.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
1:14 PM
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