Strap loafer designate a loafer featuring a golden strip, with a very short upper and 4 cm heel.

Invention of the horse bite loafers by Aldo Gucci

Aldo Gucci is the creator of that kind of loafers : he imagined in 1953 a loafer topped by a horse bit on the instep. The shoe aesthetic is completely unprecedented. At a time when loafers were exclusively brown and considered as informal shoes, Aldo Gucci choses to ennoble them. He adorns them with a golden horse bit, choses a black leather, supple and confortable, and endows them with a high heel, a sign of virility and high status. These loafers are worn bare-foot or with a pair of thin cream socks.

The moccasin with a strap: a craze among French designers

In France, during the 70s, designers such as Pierre Cardin, Jean-Claude Monderer and Carvil took over the Italian horse bit loafer to adapt it to the Parisian style. The massive golden horse bit splits in two and narrows. The two buckles thus formed on both sides of the shoe are linked with a thin strap of leather. The whole resting on a Blake construction thin sole.

Strap loafers are the synthesis of Italian casual, English elegance and French impertinence. In 1967, if front of the Drugstore in Paris, the “Weston gang” opposes the “playboys by profession” in Carvil : young Minets against cavalier dandys.