SHOES WORTH THOUSANDS.

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 48, 24 August 1895, Page 2 (Supplement)

SHOES WORTH THOUSANDS.

"It would surprise most people," said a West End bootmaker, "to know of the huge sums which some of the rich aristocracy spend on shoes, and especially on slippers. Only the other day a Countess, whose name is familiar to everyone, had a pair of slippers made which were decorated in a picture pattern, like a pair of worked slippers, with precious stones, these being largely rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. The result was exceedingly beautiful, but the cost was over £4500. There is one very accomplished workman in London whose sole occupation is that of mounting fancy slippers with jewels. The present Dowager Countess of X some years ago had made — her husband wasthen alive, and gave the order — a pair of slippers, in which she was to appear as ' Cinderella ' at a fancy dress ball given by the Duke of Manchester. The slippers were one mass of diamonds, the value of the stones being considerably over twelve thousand pounds whilst the cost of mounting them was upwards of one hundred and fifty pounds. A South American gentleman not long since presented to a great foreign singer, then in London, a pair of slippers ornamented with two butterflies of different patterns in precious stones, the cost being nearly four thousand pounds. But, in reality, it is quite a common thing for slippers ornamented in gold thread and jewels, and valued at from one to a thousand guineas, to be supplied ; and many brides on their honeymoons are furnished with even ordinary boots, shoes, and slippers, to the value of two hundred pounds or so." — From Oassell's Saturday Journal. I