During the pandemic, as we’ve spent more time at home, sales of loungewear have soared. And one item that has been in big demand is the slipper.
In the last two years, cosiness has been key. As many of us have turned our spare room or kitchen table into our de facto office, slippers have become our work shoes.
For comfort, styles like Ugg’s shearling lined boots and Birkenstock’s mules have become a must-have. Or if even your loungewear has to have the right designer credentials, step forward Versace and Gucci.
What you might not realise is that some of the slippers most coveted by the fashion pack are made by hand right here in the region – at Bowhill and Elliott in Norwich.
Shoe making was once a major industry in the city - only Northampton produced more footwear.
Bowhill and Elliott’s shop has been a fixture on London Street since 1874. But they also have workshops on site, where the eight-strong team makes around 100 pairs of luxury slippers a week.
Their signature style is the hand-embroidered velvet Albert slipper, which can be fully customised.
They also produce special designs, such as their Cocktail Collection, which is embroidered with motifs such as a Martini (shaken, not stirred, perhaps) or a Scotch on the rocks.
And for Valentine’s Day, their playful Fan of Hearts pumps have a linen upper embroidered with hearts.
The company was founded by the excellently-named local shoe maker Obadiah Bowhill, who bought the site from existing manufacturer Wright and Co.
Obadiah passed the company on to one of his sons, also called Obadiah, and his son-in-law, Thomas Baines Elliott and they formed Bowhill and Elliott in 1897.
Today it’s owned by Roger Jury, the fifth generation of the Elliott family.
“It was historically a bespoke shoe makers’ and bespoke shoes were all made on the site. This is back in a time when bespoke shoe making was commonplace, it wasn’t just for the elite,” says Bowhill and Elliott’s head of retail Marc Debieux.
As bespoke shoe making went into decline, from the 1920s Bowhill and Elliott started to buy in stock from factories around Norwich too.
In the 1960s, the company acquired fellow Norwich shoe makers the Osoeasie Slipper Company and it was then that their focus switched almost entirely to house shoes.
Since the 1980s, when the factory closed, they have all been made at in the workshop at their London Street store.
Their Albert slipper became their signature style, with their clients including well-known brands such as Crockett and Jones and Ralph Lauren, plus celebrities and royalty.
“We would manufacture these incredible velvet slippers, all made by hand, but we would make them for private label and put their selling labels inside and we didn’t sell it as a retail product [here],” says Marc.
As he explains, embroidered slippers, which might traditionally have featured monograms or animal motifs, were popularised by Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert.
“He’s the one who personally first commissioned this type of footwear,” says Marc. “The idea was that if you’d been out hunting, you’d take off your hunting boots and before you went into the house you’d put your house shoes on – and the embroidery would represent what you had been hunting. So, a stag, for example.
“What’s been so refreshing to see is how younger generations have really taken on the product," he continues. "It’s completely gender neutral, we don’t reference them as men’s or ladies’ anymore and we have two different last shapes, which range in size from size two to 14.”
And customers are not just buying the slippers to wear indoors, either.
“We’ve seen a really big demand for them to be worn as a loafer, so we’ve now introduced a rubber sole as an option to be made to all of our slippers – so they could perhaps be leather lined with a rubber sole and keep the velvet and embroidery.
"And now we just do a plain suede loafer, which is made using exactly the same manufacturing technique, just without the embroidery.”
And they’ve seen the biggest growth in their customised slippers.
“People want something different, they want it personal, they’re going to invest and they want it to be special to them,” says Marc.
“We do a consultation with the customer. We can create a one-off embroidery just for them, they can choose the colour of the velvet they use, the colour of the lining they use, what sole they use, whether they want a square toe or a round toe..."
Alongside the fact that the slippers can be personalised, another big part of their appeal to customers is that being made by hand using skills passed down through the generations (orders take around eight weeks to complete) it's the antithesis of fast, throwaway fashion.
“We still use lots of traditional techniques. We don’t use machinery, they’re hand clicked and they’re hand lasted,” says Marc.
“Eleni Kai does our clicking and all of our pattern development. She’s an incredibly talented shoe maker, who has made bespoke footwear under her own label in Greece.
“And our lead shoe maker is Stuart Moore. He’s been there since he was 16 years old - he’s now in his 50s. He worked in the old Osoeasie factory before it came on site.”
The last two years have been particularly tough for retail and, as Marc explains, they’re being pro-active in trying to encourage people to return to shopping in the city centre.
They’ve changed up their window display to reflect the part that manufacturing plays in the business. And they also offer a ‘local price’ to people who shop in store.
“We want local people to be able to enjoy our product,” says Marc.
“We do sell abroad, but we don’t just want to be sold in New York, London and Paris – we want to be part of the community and encourage people to come back to the city, for there to be an incentive to come in.
“If you come into the city, you’re also likely to buy a coffee next door, or people might come from further afield, stay in the hotels and eat in the restaurants and we feel that by offering this it’s an initiative that will put money back into the local economy.”
They’re also working to create the sort of in-store retail experience that you just can’t get from clicking add to basket.
The second floor of the shop is about to be transformed into the Slipper Lounge.
“There will be a whole floor dedicated to the slippers that we make,” says Marc.
“You’ll book an appointment and it will be more like a bespoke tailor. You’ll come in, you’ll see the velvets, you’ll be able to touch and feel them. There will be a drinks cabinet and a record player. And hopefully we’ll be able to have the door open to one of our workshops so people will be able to see what’s going on.
“It’s interesting the number of customers I’ve seen that have been shopping at Bowhill and Elliott for 40 or 50 years and they’re only recently been finding out about our velvet slippers – it was like a hidden secret that we were making out the back,” says Marc.
But now the word is definitely getting out.
Bowhill and Elliott is in London Street, Norwich. bowhillandelliott.co.uk
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