KEY POINTS:
First it was girls wearing pyjama pants under their school kilts, now it seems slippers are the latest headache for school uniform monitors.
Auckland schoolboys are shunning traditional black lace-ups and turning up to class in old-fashioned slippers.
Suggestions why range from laziness and comfort to a trend set by United States rap star Snoop Dogg, who has been snapped on the street in the style of footwear commonly reserved for the home.
The controversial rapper has been spotted at an airport wearing slippers featuring embroidered marijuana leaves.
He was also seen this year in Paris shopping in hotel-issue white slippers and turned up to a magazine interview last year wearing monogrammed velvet slippers.
One teacher at a school in South Auckland said they had tried to ban slippers, but there were so many students turning up in them it was impractical to send them home.
"Snoop's done it and now everyone wants to and we can't end up sending 20 kids home each day."
Mike Williams, principal of Aorere College in Papatoetoe, said students were "trying it on" most days.
The trend had developed in the past three or four years but it was only a minor annoyance.
When asked why they wore slippers, pupils came up with various excuses - "my shoes were wet, I left my shoes in the car, my shoes broke".
It's not the first time such stay-at-home attire has become trendy outside the bedroom.
In 2004, Waitaki Girls High School in Oamaru banned girls from wearing pyjama pants under their kilts.
Pupils at the time said the fashion curiosity was a way to keep warm by rolling up the pyjama pants and tucking them into knee-high stockings.
Dr Elaine Webster, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Otago who wrote her PhD thesis on school uniforms, said a trend among schoolgirls in Wellington in 2004 was wearing fishnet stockings on their arms, like fingerless gloves. Their inspiration was "emo" fashion.
Schools cited sports shoes as the main problem when enforcing uniform discipline, she said.
"One school mentioned a student not allowed to wear his expensive shoes [who] started carrying them around instead."
Dr Webster believed that if schools just ignored the slippers, students would soon stop wearing them. "It would run its course like any fad."
Her research found that the less schools worried about enforcing uniform rules, the less students tried to break them.
Height of fashion
* Then: Waitaki Girls High School, Oamaru, banned girls from wearing pyjama pants under their kilts in 2004.
* Now: Slippers are the latest bedroom item turning up in schools, with pupils risking punishment by not wearing regulation shoes.
