Hush Puppies is an international brand of contemporary, casual footwear

Footwear

Footwear consists of garments worn on the feet, for fashion, protection against the environment, and adornment. Being barefoot is commonly associated with poverty, but some cultures chose not to wear footwear at least in some situations....

 for men, women and children. The shoes have been described as "the classic American brushed-suede shoes with the lightweight crepe sole". A division of Wolverine Worldwide, Hush Puppies is headquartered in Rockford, Michigan

Rockford, Michigan

Rockford is a city in Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 5,719. It is on the Rogue River and is only a few miles north of Grand Rapids.- History :...

. Wolverine markets or licenses the Hush Puppies name for footwear in over 120 countries throughout the world. In addition, the Hush Puppies name is licensed for non-footwear fashion categories, including clothing

Clothing

Clothing refers to any covering for the human body that is worn. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic and is a feature of nearly all human societies...

, eyewear

Glasses

Glasses, also known as eyeglasses , spectacles or simply specs , are frames bearing lenses worn in front of the eyes. They are normally used for vision correction or eye protection. Safety glasses are a kind of eye protection against flying debris or against visible and near visible light or...

 and plush toys.

Hush Puppies uses a Basset Hound

Basset Hound

The Basset Hound is a short-legged breed of dog of the hound family. They are scent hounds, bred to hunt rabbits and hare by scent. Their sense of smell for tracking is second only to that of the Bloodhound....

 as its logo.

History

The Hush Puppies brand was founded in 1958 following extensive work by Wolverine to develop a practical method of pigskin

Pigskin

Pigskin may refer to:*Leather made from a pig's skin*Football *Pork rinds*Pigskin 621 A.D., an arcade game...

 tanning

Tanning

Tanning is the making of leather from the skins of animals which does not easily decompose. Traditionally, tanning used tannin, an acidic chemical compound from which the tanning process draws its name . Coloring may occur during tanning...

 for the US

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 military. (Pigskin is considered one of the most durable leathers and the government was interested in its use in gloves and other protective materials for soldiers.) Chairman Victor Krause developed the concept of a "casual" pigskin shoe to appeal to the then-growing post-war suburbia

SubUrbia

subUrbia is a play by Eric Bogosian chronicling the nighttime activities of a group of aimless 20-somethings still living in their suburban Boston hometown and their reunion with a former high school classmate who has become a successful musician...

 in the United States. The brand became instantly recognizable as a leisure casual staple of late 1950s and 1960s American life.

The Hush Puppies name and mascot were coined by the brand's first sales manager, James Gaylord Muir. Initially, the company's advertising agency

Advertising agency

An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...

 recommended naming the product "Lasers". Then, on a selling trip to the southeastern United States

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

, Muir dined with one of his regional salesmen and the meal included hush puppies

Hushpuppy

A hushpuppy or cornbread ball is a savory, starch-based food made from cornmeal batter that is deep fried or baked in small ball or sphere shapes, or occasionally oblong or ring shapes...

, traditional fried southern corn

Cornmeal

Cornmeal is flour ground from dried maize or American corn. It is a common staple food, and is ground to fine, medium, and coarse consistencies. In the United States, the finely ground cornmeal is also referred to as cornflour. However, the word cornflour denotes cornstarch in recipes from the...

balls. When Muir asked about the origin of the name, he was told that farmers threw hush puppies at the hounds to "quiet their barking dog

Dog

The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...

s." Muir saw a connection to his new product. "Barking dogs" in the vernacular of the day was an idiom for sore feet. Muir surmised his new shoes were so comfortable that they could "quiet barking dogs."

Hush Puppies claimed their rubber soles saved the life of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards

Keith Richards

Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...

 when he accidentally touched his guitar against an ungrounded

Ground (electricity)

In electrical engineering, ground or earth may be the reference point in an electrical circuit from which other voltages are measured, or a common return path for electric current, or a direct physical connection to the Earth....

 microphone

Microphone

A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...

 at a 1965 concert in Sacramento

Sacramento

Sacramento is the capital of the state of California, in the United States of America.Sacramento may also refer to:- United States :*Sacramento County, California*Sacramento, Kentucky*Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta...

, California. Richards was knocked unconscious, but medics believed that the crepe-soled Hush Puppies shoes he was wearing insulated him and saved his life.

In 1994, when sales of Hush Puppies were down to 30,000 pairs a year, and Wolverine was considering phasing out the brand, Hush Puppies suddenly became "hip

Hip (slang)

Hip is a slang term meaning fashionably current and in the know. Hip is the opposite of square or prude.Hip, like cool, does not refer to one specific quality. What is considered hip is continuously changing. The term hip is said to have originated in African American Vernacular English in the...

" in the clubs and bars of downtown Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, where young people were "buying them up" at small shoe stores. In the fall of 1995, fashion designers John Bartlett, Anna Sui

Anna Sui

Anna Sui is an American fashion designer. Her luxury brand retails globally in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Her clothing, fragrance, cosmetic, and accessories lines sell at Anna Sui stores in over 50 countries and are also widely distributed at leading department stores...

, and Joel Fitzpatrick

Joel Fitzpatrick

Joel Fitzpatrick is a lighting and architectural designer, artist and entrepreneur based in New York City.-Early life:Fitzpatrick was born in Maine and raised in California to a French mother and American-Irish father...

 began featuring them in their collections. Depending on word of mouth

Word of mouth

Word of mouth, or viva voce, is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication. Storytelling is the oldest form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others of something, whether a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and...

, Wolverine sold 430,000 pairs of the shoes, and four times that the following year. Hush Puppies won the prize for best accessory

Fashion accessory

Fashion accessories are decorative items that supplement and complement clothes, such as jewelery, gloves, handbags, hats, belts, scarves, wigs, watches, sunglasses, pins, stockings, bow ties, hand fans, leg warmers, leggings, neckties, suspenders, and tights....

 at the Council of Fashion Designers awards dinner in 1996. The '90s resurgence was featured as a prominent example in Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, CM is a Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He is currently based in New York City and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996...

's The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, first published by Little Brown in 2000....

.