Pre-order. Ours arrive in Brighton in the first week of November. Order now and yours is reserved and sent the moment they land, in very good time for Christmas.

The cloth is a woodland tapestry — stags, foxes, rabbits and birds moving through flowering briars — woven on a ground so dark it reads as plain from across the room. You have to be close to find the fox. Shearling within, moulded rubber beneath, our emblem set into the tread.

Black is the most useful thing a slipper can be. It takes a dinner suit as happily as it takes flannel pyjamas, which makes it the pair worn on Christmas morning and again at midnight on New Year's Eve. Backless, so it goes on in one motion, and soled properly enough for the end of the garden.

66% cotton, 34% polyester upper. Sheepskin-lined. UK 5–13. Supplied in a cotton drawstring bag, which is rather the point when it's a present.