There’s a really good reason why Dorothy’s iconic ruby slippers aren’t red in Wicked

Though many of us expected Dorothy’s iconic slippers to be ruby in Wicked, costume designer Paul Tazewell confirmed why they chose to stick with the source material’s silver.

Wicked has taken the world by storm with glowing reviews, talks of Oscar nominations, and a viral meme that is being widely shared on Twitter and TikTok. But as we all know, there aren’t positives without some controversy and now some are complaining that Dorothy’s slippers should have been ruby.

Now why couldn’t they just make the shoes Ruby https://t.co/Xp55b9b03t

— Nick (@aftersunfilm) November 24, 2024

After viewers took to Twitter with complaints about the not-so-ruby slippers, Wicked’s costume wiz Paul Tazewell settled the debate while armed with the origins of the signature shoe.

“They’re not ruby,” he told PEOPLE. “In the book, they were these odd little silver boots.”

He added: “There’s the idea of Cinderella and the glass slipper, and then it’s like how we make shoes a myth and how we’ve indulged them into our fantasy fairytale storytelling. In the book, they were silver shoes, and then they became crystal and silver shoes.”

In special nods to the works of Oz that came before, Paul designed the shoes with swirls and jewels that mimicked the designs worn by Nessarose, later known as the Wicked With of the East.

The origins of Dorothy’s slippers are a little confusing

Credit: Whitney Saleski/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

With so many iterations of Oz, from the numerous book adaptations to the legendary stage show, the colour of Dorothy’s shoes is not the only confusing detail to leave viewers stumped.

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Back in the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie, leading star Judy Garland had somewhere between six and 10 pairs of ruby slippers to wear. If you remember correctly, she nabbed them from the Wicked Witch of the East after she was crushed by Dorothy’s house. While the source material called for clunky silver slippers, the movie was so enthralled by technicolour filming that they ditched the origins of the shoe for the sparkly red we all know and love today.

The slippers were a sleek silver design in L. Frank Baum’s original novel, The Marvelous Land Of Oz, with illustrations by W.W. Denslow depicting them with a pointed toe and Mary Jane-style buckle.

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Featured Image credit: YouTube/Universal Pictures & Whitney Saleski/SOPA Images/Shutterstock