I was told that slip on shoes aka "loafers" are so named for their lack of laces and holes. Therefore the less effort needed to put them on or take them off your feet. Not for the lazy type that the name has come to imply. Initially it was the lower class worker that these shoes were sold to, not necessarily the lazy. There was less work involved in the cobbler shop, and hence a lower price required to purchase the loafers. I have read in marketing classes that Slip on shoes (Loafers) became noteworthy in the US Shoe market post WWII because they could be made more quickly than tie shoes or boots, although the supporting details in the text were somewhat shallow, The added comfort from these more loose fitting shoes would seem to be more of a reason for their growth in popularity. As society relaxed, so did the demands and perceptions of proper clothing. As a small child in the late 1960's, I remember my father getting out of his steel toed work shoes and slipping into his comfey loafers when he got home from work.

There are other 'slip on' or 'step in' shoes, e.g., the 'pump' but 'loafer' is a specific style of leather slip on shoe with a low broad heel and a moccasin toe. The word 'loafer' was originally a trademark of the Spaulding leather company and has little if anything to do with relaxing or loafing. The name probably suggested the situation, instead of the other way round. In fact loafers are often worn in more formal business situations especially in certain professions, Bush the elder claimed that Clinton was supported by "every trial lawyer who ever wore a tasseled loafer." Some etiquette guides recommend saving the loafers for "casual day" at the office. Still a lawyer will wear them while arguing against the death penalty for his client; he will probably put on his Oxfords when appearing before the Supreme Court. In the early 1930's a photo appeared in Esquire magazine of Norwegian farmers wearing slip-on shoes around the cattle loafing yard, a term with a specific agricultural meaning. The Spaulding Leather Co. started making shoes based on thse photos by 1933 - trademarking them as 'Loafers'. By 1936 the Bass Shoe Company was making a similar shoe trademarked 'Weejuns' (Norweejuns, get it?) The word loafer followed refrigerator and linoleum into general generic usage; Weejun remains a trademark, tho for several styles of shoe, of the Bass Co., now a division of the Brown Shoe Co.; in fact you can now purchase black Brown Bass Weejun loafers. Bass was responsible for adding the strap across the top, or at least adding the lip shaped opening in the strap. ( The lip shape is apocryphally credited to Alice Bass, wife of the then head of Bass, who figuratively kissed each pair.) The opening seemed to naturally invite the insertion of decoration and shinny new pennies became the decoration of choice. Another bit of apocrypha, that has entered folklore, and which I personally heard away back when, is that girls often inserted a dime, so that if her date became disagreeable she could use a pay phone and call Daddy. ( If the opening was just a bit larger she could have inserted a quarter, in case her date's car 'ran out of gas,' in the days of 10 cent phone calls gas was a quarter a gallon.) For a while the women's version of the loafer was called a 'pony' supposedly from the habit of slipping a foot out of one shoe and resting the toes on the back of the shoe resembling a pony with one leg resting on the very tip of its hoof (while it was loafing in the loafing yard?) At least it was called that by advertisers who posed models in that pose and used the word in the copy. It was basically an attempt by the shoemakers and their fashion writer lackeys to create a marketing catch phrase. The term may have originated as a corruption of penny. Pony is still used for some styles today, some of them actual loafers with the strap and opening, but also for a shoe made from or made to resemble painted or pinto pony skin leather, usually with the hair still on. Pony is also used for shoes that are not true loafers but designed to resemble some kind of low riding boot, or at least some kind of fancied shoe that was worn after actually riding to the hounds but still around the general 'high society hunt scene.' Some of those 'ponies' are for men, some have tassels. I don't know if Bass makes ponies, if they do it may be possible to buy a pair of Brown and Black Brown Bass Weejun Pony Skin Tasseled Pony Penny Loafers to wear as you walk across the linoleum to the refrigerator whilst mingling with the attorneys at the Hunt Club. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/crosswords/trivia/quiz298.html (#4) http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/ref/loafers 'absoluteastronomy' ? I dunno, I'm still wonderin' if Weejun wasn't really some kind of attempt at an Indian name cause of the moccasin toe or if a "Quarter Loafer" would be a Large Mouthed Bass.

The creator of the "loafer" loved his bread, and one day he decided that he was going to create a very well known style of shoe... and call it a loafer after his favorite food. =]