A backless shoe that leaves the heel exposed.
A mule has a front and no back. The Fashion History Timeline at FIT quotes Cumming, Cunnington and Cunnington, for whom the mule has “only a front section, either flat-soled or high-heeled”, and DeMello’s “slippers made with just a vamp and no quarters”. The upper is a vamp alone, with no quarter or heel counter, so nothing holds the foot from behind.
The word describes the back of the shoe, not its heel. Christian Louboutin sets its Dolly Mule on a 100 mm stiletto heel, makes a men’s mule, the Thome, and calls its ChanMe an open-back loafer. The V&A holds a mule slipper with a block heel that Roger Vivier designed for Christian Dior around 1960. The terms overlap: FIT quotes Snodgrass on “backless slides (or mules)”, and Louboutin describes its Fanny Slide as a mule.
In job listings
Mule names a product, not a job. It belongs to the vocabulary of shoe floors and shoe merchandising: listings include selling advisors for women’s shoes, who are asked for deep product knowledge, and merchandising managers responsible for a house’s women’s shoes category. See current women’s shoes roles.
