SKIN IN THE GAME
Intriguingly, the word we use for a shoe that was invented for la dolce vita derives from a verb relating to the Italian phrase il dolce far niente (‘for pleasantly doing nothing’). For the earliest iteration of what we today call the loafer was created by the London shoemaker Wildsmith in response to a 1926 request from King George VI for a soft, comfortable shoe he could wear when ‘loafing’ around his rural properties.
Another common ancestor to the modern loafer was the slip-on created by the shoemaker Nils Gregoriusson Tveranger, inspired by the lace-less footwear worn by fishermen in Tveranger’s Norway, and similar to those he’d seen on Native American people’s feet when studying in
