Michael Jackson's Favorite Loafer Turns 90 From the Ivy League to Thriller, G.H. BASS celebrates 150 years of history and 90 years of the penny loafer that changed the way we wear moccasins
Fashion
September 14th, 2026
September 14th, 2026
Some shoes are so commonplace that it's easy to forget someone, at some point, had to invent them. The penny loafer is one of them. Today it's practically unavoidable: you'll find it in the collections of major luxury brands, in fast fashion offerings, in preppy wardrobes and more alternative ones alike. Yet behind that silhouette we now take for granted lies a specific model that in 2026 turns 90 years old: the Weejuns® by G.H.BASS. An anniversary that coincides with an even more significant milestone: 150 years since the American brand was founded.
The story of G.H.BASS begins in 1876 in Wilton, Maine, when George Henry Bass launched a footwear business built around a fairly pragmatic principle: making shoes suited to the purpose for which they would be worn. Over a century and a half, G.H.BASS has journeyed from the American outdoors to university campuses, from jazz clubs to European subcultures, building much of its history around styles designed first and foremost to be worn. The turning point came in 1936, when the brand reinterpreted a traditional Norwegian country shoe and launched the Weejuns®. This was the model that would give shape to the first penny loafer, establishing a design that has remained essentially recognizable to this day.
The History of G.H.BASS Weejuns®
According to legend, in the 1950s American college students began slipping a coin into the distinctive slot on the Weejuns®' saddle strap. A fairly unremarkable gesture that went on to become one of the most enduring images of Ivy League style, eventually giving the shoe the name by which virtually the entire world knows it today.
From there, the moccasin gradually ceased to belong to any single wardrobe. It was worn by JFK, Audrey Hepburn, and Miles Davis; it entered Mod culture and Northern Soul, and made its way to the Italian Paninari. Then there's Michael Jackson, who in the Thriller video of 1983 wore a pair of black Weejuns®. One of those pop culture moments that definitively helped shift the penny loafer out of the realm of the collegiate shoe. Perhaps this is precisely why, ninety years on, the style continues to work, having become a kind of wardrobe passepartout.
150 Years On, G.H.BASS Returns to Its Archive
To celebrate both G.H.BASS's 150th anniversary and the Weejuns®' 90th simultaneously, the Anniversary Collection FW26 draws directly from the styles that have defined the brand's history. The collection is a limited edition available only for a limited period of time. Alongside the Larson Anniversary in black and wine polished leather and a tricolor version in wine, navy, and white, silhouettes tied to the brand's outdoor origins also return, including the Ranger Moc and Camp Moc.
The most immediate detail remains the dedicated coin marking the 90th anniversary, set into the saddle strap of the Weejuns®, while the penny itself becomes a collectible through a series of Anniversary Coins that revive historic G.H.BASS logos and graphics. It's a fairly literal way of bringing the two anniversaries together: returning to that coin which, according to legend, 1950s students would slip almost playfully into their shoes, to tell a story that began in Maine 150 years ago and has since found its way into practically everyone's wardrobe.