Hip-Hop

Barefoot Slippers, From an Estonian Family Cobbler Since 1927.

Right. Bear with me on this one — Hip-Hop is the rather charming barefoot-slipper line from a family-run Estonian shoemaker (Ritico OÜ, in Võru county down south, where rather a lot of these splendid Estonian brands seem to come from), with a frankly impressive shoe-making heritage stretching back to 1927. The proposition is the slightly evangelical one of the global barefoot community: feet, when you stop and think about it, weren't really designed to be wedged into stiff, thick-soled, suffocating things — and rather a lot of modern foot trouble can be traced back to that one rather basic mistake. Hip-Hop's response is properly thoughtful: leather slippers with a generous toe box, a flexible 2mm sole, no heel rise, and the kind of spacious fit that feels (this is genuinely the claim) about as close to barefoot as one can get without simply being barefoot.

The catalogue runs from tiny kids' sizes (EU 25 upwards) right through to a properly accommodating adult range (up to EU 46). The signature pieces are the Hip-Hop ballerinas in smooth leather (black and white the classic options, with rather more adventurous colours for the more adventurous), the Talka leather ballerina, and the leather gymnastic slippers with rubber ridge and sole — which, in addition to being slippers, double rather brilliantly as ballet shoes, gymnastics shoes, eurythmy shoes for Waldorf schools, and (one suspects) the dignified solution to that thing where one's office insists on indoor shoes. Soft natural felt insoles, properly classic leather throughout, designed with input from the barefoot community itself, and made in slow-fashion small batches by a family that has, frankly, had quite a long time to work out how to make a decent shoe.

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