The recorded history of slippers can be traced back to the 12th century. In the West, the record can only be traced to 1478.^[2][3]

Slippers in China date from 4700 BCE.^[4] They were made of cotton or woven rush, had leather linings, and featured symbols of power, such as dragons.

Native American moccasins were also highly decorative. Such moccasins depicted nature scenes and were embellished with beadwork and fringing, their soft sure-footedness made them suitable for indoors appropriation. Inuit and Aleut people made shoes from smoked hare-hide to protect their feet against the frozen ground inside their homes.^[5]

Fashionable Orientalism saw the introduction into the West of designs like the baboosh.

Victorian people needed such shoes to keep the dust and gravel outside their homes.^[6] For Victorian ladies slippers gave an opportunity to show off their needlepoint skills and use embroidery as decoration