Ugg boots, or simply uggs, are a generic term for a type of sheepskin boot popular in Australia and New Zealand. (The term allegedly comes from the way the boot "hugs" the foot and leg.) This cheap and warm footwear has been adopted by social groups such as bogans, westies, and bevans as acceptable in public. Most other Australians only wear ugg boots around the house, or at the most small trips no further than the local corner shop. The boots have also been popular with surfers and competitive swimmers since at least the 1960s, for keeping warm whilst out of the water.

Although many popular Australian actors have probably worn ugg boots in private at some point, it was a Canadian, Pamela Anderson, who started wearing ugg boots acquired in Australia to keep her legs warm between takes for the television show Baywatch, and it was this that may well have originally spurred interest in these boots in America.

Currently these boots are very fashionable, partly due to marketing by an American company, Ugg Australia (i.e. Deckers Outdoor Corporation) that in the US has managed to appropriate the term ugg boot as a registered trademark. (Their boots are made in China.) So plenty of authentic ugg boots cannot be so named by US retailers.

External links

• Save the ugg
• Sellers of authentic Australian ugg boots