Leaving germ-laden sneakers at the threshold seems like a no brainer. However, hosting company sans footwear can come across as a little gauche. Enter designer Jill Burrows, whose eponymous line features Moroccan-inspired babouches handcrafted in Los Angeles.
While living abroad, Burrows began her quest for the perfect house shoe. “I would see traditional Moroccan babouches around London. I knew they were the perfect slippers I was looking for, but I could never find [a style] I wanted,” she says. “The search continued, literally, for years. So, I decided that I would have to produce my own.”
Burrows’ idea sat in a sketchbook for years. “After I had my first baby, my husband and I stopped wearing shoes in our home. We lived in downtown [Los Angeles] at the time, and seeing her crawl on the floor, it just made complete sense,” Burrows explains. “Come the second baby, and still not having the slippers I wanted, the idea of creating my own babouches became an obsession. After a ton of research, I finally landed on working with a husband-and-wife team in North Hollywood to handcraft each pair.”
Traditional babouches often boast bright colors, embroidery, and sequins; Burrows’ interpretations feature a variety of color-blocked leather combinations and carefully crafted details. The slippers are designed for indoor use but Burrows admits to wearing them in her backyard daily. Some customers also think the shoes are too pretty to keep indoors.
“[Some] people love them so much that they want to wear them out as regular shoes,” Burrows says. “A few people have told me that they had soles glued onto them so that they could [wear them outside], and I even got a photo of someone hiking in them!”
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