Katherine Rosman, The New York Times (2017)
Eric Edwards, 32, and a general manager of a bakery in Houston, and Wilbur L. Ross Jr., 79, and the commerce secretary for the Trump administration, have at least one thing in common. They both are devoted clients of the footwear brand Stubbs & Wootton, known for its patterned and embroidered slippers.
Made in velvet, linen and needlepoint, they are sold custom-made or off the rack and retail from about $450 to $1,000 a pair — available at the Stubbs & Wootton store in Palm Beach, Fla., its shoebox-size shop at the Carlyle hotel on East 76th Street in Manhattan or online. Many of the slippers bear sassy messages. One popular style has an embroidered screw on the right shoe and the letter U on the left. Another style is decorated with wasps.
Mr. Ross was seen wearing a pair of black slippers embroidered with the Commerce Department’s logo at President Trump’s first speech to a joint session of Congress late last month, spotted by eagle-eyed reporters who shared screen grabs on Twitter of the billionaire Mr. Ross’s velvet-clad feet.
Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross wore $600 slippers by Palm Beach @Stubbs_Wootton, with a custom Commerce Dept logo, to Trump’s speech tonight.
2,400 people are talking about this
Mr. Edwards wore his most recently purchased pair, black velvet with embroidered golden lions, to his best friend’s wedding, held last month during the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans. To walk the bride down the aisle, he paired the shoes with shredded jeans, an oxford-cloth shirt bought for $6 at a thrift shop and a blue blazer.
Mr. Edwards is on his 11th pair of Stubbs & Wootton slippers, which he buys new and used and which, he said, deliver more value and style than the $900 Gucci sneakers his friends splurge on. “I’m very image-savvy and I’m very frugal,” he said.
After years of being a wardrobe staple for the lockjaw set from Palm Beach to Newport, Stubbs & Wootton shoes are enjoying a surge in popularity among younger customers drawn to their old-money wryness and Instagram-bait imagery. “I call them emoji shoes,” Mr. Edwards said.
The brand is a big deal on college campuses these days. “It’s a really fun shoe because it’s like a bumper sticker for your foot,” said Grace Wiener, 21, the president of WFUStyle, a fashion club and website run by students at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Late last month she chased down a friend she saw on campus who was wearing Stubbs & Wootton loafers. They were black velvet. The right shoe had DU stitched on it in blue; the left had MB. “It was around midterms and I said to her, ‘I need a picture because that is so how I feel right now.’” Ms. Wiener posted the image on the fashion club’s Instagram. “Feet-selfies” are a big trend, she noted — some are calling them “solefies” — and the graphic slippers stand out. “They add diversity to one’s Instagram feed,” she said.
Perhaps this is not what Percy Steinhart had in mind when he founded the company in Palm Beach in 1993 to create an all-purpose slipper for men and women by adding a dash of contemporary whimsy. Mr. Steinhart, who came to the United States in 1960 when he was 10 as a Cuban exile, had wanted to name the company “Holden & Caulfield,” but “my lawyer told me Salinger would rake me over the coals,” Mr. Steinhart wrote in an email. (He declined to take part in a phone interview, he wrote, “out of respect for my friend and client Wilbur Ross and the office of the secretary of commerce and my political neutrality.”)
Mr. Steinhart, who said one of his great-grandfathers went to Cuba with Theodore Roosevelt and eventually became United States consul in Havana, settled on the name Stubbs & Wootton, in homage to the English painters George Stubbs and John Wootton. The company website explains why: “Both specialized in painting scenes of gentlemanly sporting whose influence is so fittingly tied to our eternal pursuit of elegance.”
Stubbs & Wootton is soon to open a new store on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, Mr. Steinhart said, and has introduced a line for children. He said it had also added new left-shoe, right-shoe ciphers, like O.B.U.F. (overbred and underfunded) and Q.O.C.D. (quite our class dear).
Jacqueline Paolino, 25, bought her first pair (black velvet embroidered with gold Buddhas), when she visited a friend in Palm Beach earlier this winter while on vacation from Providence, R.I.
She bought a second pair (black velvet with stitched martini and champagne glasses) that she wore last month to the Vanity Fair Oscar party, which she attended with her father, Joseph R. Paolino Jr., a former mayor of Providence.
Her third pair is on order. They are designed in part by Ms. Paolino, who said she was named for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Stitched on the left shoe is “Jackie,” rendered in Mrs. Onassis’ handwriting. On the right shoe is a strand of large, dangling faux pearls.
Ms. Paolino is always looking for a stylish flat, having recently given up on high heels. “They get stuck in New England cobblestones,” she said.
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