In the Brothers Grimm version of “Cinderella,” the slipper is made of gold. The German tale is titled “Aschenputtel,” and its identifying shoe is described as a golden slipper that helps the prince find the mysterious young woman from the festival.
The slipper is part of the tale’s recognition test. Aschenputtel has secretly attended the celebrations with supernatural help, but she repeatedly escapes before her identity is discovered. After she loses the shoe, the prince searches for the woman whose foot fits it, eventually finding Aschenputtel despite her stepfamily’s attempts to hide her.
This detail is often confused with Charles Perrault’s French “Cendrillon,” where the famous slipper is made of glass. The glass slipper belongs to the version that became especially influential in English-speaking culture, while gold is the standard answer for the Brothers Grimm telling. “Cinderella” itself is a broad story tradition with thousands of variants, so the material depends on which literary version the question names.