Hightower Lowdown

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that it is now fashionable to wear bedroom slippers outside of the house. They're don't mean when you schlep out in the morning in your robe to pick up your newspaper—but actually wearing house slippers to work, or even to restaurants and social functions.

Not so very long ago, showing up at the office shod in slippers would've gotten you escorted down the hall for a long talk with the company shrink. But in today's "new economy," in which we're to believe that everyone is becoming a high technillionaire by the time they're 30, not only is it OK, it's considered a sign of financial success. "Geek chic" is what one arbiter of shoe fashion calls it. She declares that wearing slippers outside the home "says you must be working for a 'dot com' and be worth a million dollars."

Of course, there are slippers and there are slippers. Real gabillionaire geeks could get away with shuffling around the office in their old scruffy pair of terry cloth slippers, but this is not what the doyens of high fashion have in mind. No, no, darlings, they're thinking of the silk and velvet Gucci slipper for men, now available for $285 a pair at your corner Neiman Marcus.