The Well-Dressed Edit Facebook ad: “The Paris Knot Slide”

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1664987298623469

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Facebook and Instagram

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Jewelry & Watches

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Tess's mother lived in her husband's old plaid slippers for years, and Tess finally knows why. Tess has puzzled over it for ages. Her mother isn't difficult. Not about anything else. She does the crossword in pen. She runs the raffle at church. She remembers every grandchild's teacher by name. But the pretty house shoes? Nothing sticks. She takes care with her clothes, too. She still wears her good wool skirts on Sundays and her mother-of-pearl earrings to the grocery store. So it never made sense that her feet were the one place she'd stopped trying. Especially in a pair of men's plaid slippers that her husband retired when the kids got him new ones. The odd thing is that Tess's aunt, two years older, has worn a pretty pair around the house every day for as long as anyone remembers. Embroidered velvet, nothing to fasten, bought on a trip decades back and long since impossible to find. What does her aunt have that her mother doesn't? The first pair Tess gave her was blush satin with a bow on top. Day one, her mother wore them. Day two, the bow had come untied and they were by the couch. Day three, the plaid ones again. Tess waited and tried again with a quilted pair that buckled at the side. Same story. Then a velvet pair with two tiny hooks at the side. Same story, plus a comment about "fussy shoes." She remembers that first pair clearly: a birthday, a good while back. Blush satin, a bow her mother called "darling." Worn twice. After that, a soft gray pair from the department store with a strap that snapped shut. Off by the first cup of tea. Then the plain kind, gray fleece, wide and shapeless, that her mother studied for a long moment and put back in the bag. Every time, a couple of good days, then the plaid slippers. Her mother's friends had theories. She's sentimental about his old things. She doesn't like change. She was raised not to waste. Tess tried each idea in turn. A basket by the bed. Matching the color to her robe. Wrapping the new pair beside the old ones, so it felt like a set. Nothing worked. Meanwhile, her aunt went about in her embroidered velvet pair, never giving them a thought. A sharp woman doesn't turn down something this pretty, gift after gift, without a reason. Then came the deadline. Tess's sister invited their mother to spend a month with her family in Arizona, in a house where everyone dresses for dinner and nobody wears street shoes indoors. Her mother said she'd think about it, and Tess knew what that meant. She had no intention of spending a month in somebody else's house in a man's plaid slippers, and she had no intention of saying so. So Tess went looking for the real reason. The explanation turned up in a video: a wardrobe stylist who has dressed women for magazine shoots her whole career, talking about mothers who "won't" wear the house shoes they're given. "People assume it's stubbornness," she said. "It almost never is. Look at what the shoe asks of her." Most pretty pairs, she explained, ask for something small before they go on. A buckle. A bow that has to be tied again. A strap to snap. Each of those takes ten seconds. But ten seconds, a dozen times a day, every day, is a chore. The old pair asks for nothing, so the old pair wins. "It's like a coat with a sticky zipper," the stylist said. "You love the coat. You wear the other one." "Daughters show me the same three pairs," she went on. "The one with the bow, the one with the buckle, the plain one she won't be seen in. Then they tell me their mother is stubborn." Tess laughed out loud at that, alone in her kitchen. So prettier had never been the answer. Nor softer, nor a basket by the bed. Put a bow on a shoe and it has to be tied; make it plain and she won't be seen in it. Tess thought about every time her mother had waved off a gift and slid her feet back into the plaid ones without a glance. The satin pair: a bow. The quilted pair: a buckle. The gray pair: a strap. Even the plain fleece pair, the one with nothing to do up, looked like it came from a discount bin. Pair after pair, each asking her mother for one more little job, or for her pride. And her aunt's velvet pair? Nothing to fasten, and pretty enough to wear to a party. That was the whole secret. All along, Tess had been giving her mother chores in tissue paper. "So what are you looking for this time?" her husband asked that night. "Something as easy as Dad's old slippers," Tess said. "And as pretty as Aunt Bev's." Nothing to tie, buckle or snap, she said. She steps in and she's dressed. But nothing that looks plain, or she won't touch it. Most of what she found was one or the other: fussy and pretty, or easy and dreary. The pair she kept coming back to was the Paris Knot Slide, from Bisous & Co. Two wide corduroy bands crossed over the front of the foot, joined in a knot that's already tied. Open toe, open back, so she slides in without using her hands. A corduroy footbed, ribs running toe to heel. A twisted cord in the same shade around the whole edge. Tess had her doubts. With buy one, get one free, though, the worst case was a pair for herself. She ordered Mocha for her mother and Blue Gray for herself. The first batch had already sold out, so she joined the preorder for the second. Tess brought the box over on a Saturday morning, set it on the kitchen table and talked about the weather. Day one, her mother wore them through breakfast. Tess noticed something new: the plaid slippers hadn't moved from under the bed. Day two, the Mocha pair was still on at dinner. Day three, her mother called. "Tess, there's nothing to do with these. I just slip into them." By the second week, she'd stopped mentioning them at all, which is how Tess knew. Her aunt noticed at Sunday lunch. "Well," she said, looking down. "Finally, a pair as good as mine." By the third, her mother called Tess's sister and said yes to Arizona. The night before she left, she packed the knot slides first. The plaid ones went back to Tess's father, who said he'd wondered where they'd gone. "I'm glad you kept at it," she told Tess, hugging her goodbye. All those shrugs, and all they ever meant was that every pretty pair came with a chore. If your mother "won't wear" the house shoes you give her, look at what each pair asks her to do. If there's a bow, a buckle or a strap, start there. No amount of prettiness fixes a shoe that asks for a little job every time. No basket, no reminder, no matching robe. So much effort went into everything but the two things that matter: nothing to fasten, and a look she'd choose herself. The Paris Knot Slide comes in Blush, Cream, Black, Blue Gray and Mocha, women's sizes 5 to 11 in five sizes. Between two, pick the smaller one, or the bigger one for thick socks. It's buy one, get one free right now: one for her, one to keep. The first batch is gone, and the second is open for preorder. The brand has more than 15,000 customers.

Where the ad sends people

bisousandco.com

The Paris Knot Slide

A corduroy house slide: two crossed bands meeting in one knot, a twisted cord around the footbed, an open toe and back. Five colors. Women's US 5 to 11.