On a more positive note, Kurt Geiger at Bicester Village are doing some amazing sales! Picked up a couple of items today, at an unbelievable price, been looking for a pair of Charlotte Olympia Kitties for ages and finally found my favourite ones there. Also couldn’t resist the Stuart Weitzmans either they were from AW15/16, not shoes I needed but still it was too good to refuse.
Abstract Kitties by Charlotte Olympia (left) and Stuart Weitzman sandals (right) both from Kurt Geiger Bicester Village
To platform or not
Strangely we shall start with the single sole shoe, which many of my regulars will notice is quite a strong feature of my blog. Single soles do give one great advantage, they’re precise, and feel so much more natural. Anything that could throw you off balance can be felt underfoot, but equally the policies on installing tactile paving makes it agony to try to cross any road these days. There is also a natural limit to heel height on a single sole shoe, most people will struggle beyond 10-12cm of heel, even with my huge 40/41s I max out at 12cm, and I have huge respect to anybody with petite feet who wears anything with 10cms or more.

Mythbusting: Toe tape
This is a post from one my archives, I hope you will it’s an interesting technique that is worth exploring.
The term foot binding, will always be associated with the horrific and tortuous procedure historically performed on Chinese women prior to the 20th Century. You might argue we put ourselves through similar tortures forcing our feet to shape of a heeled shoe, it’s true but we do it through choice, and we can liberate our feet whenever we choose. Now ironically it’s a form of foot binding that is supposed to help.
According to Marie Helvin, taping together toes three and four (counted from your big toe) will stop you from suffering in your heels. I can report having tried it, it does indeed seem to work. Why I’m not totally sure, but my weight seems to be more evenly spread, without the tape I feel my feet rolling outwards, instead when taped the weight is more towards the ball of my big toe.

My Elbas are really easy to wear, but the tape means I can stand in one spot a lot longer. It does only make sense with closed toe shoes, but still works even when the vamp is really low cut.