
Vegan Leather

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.
We live in the perfect time for luxury shoes, with money tight since the 2008 global recession, fashion has become about strategically deploying luxury investment pieces rather than filling ones wardrobe with high end purchases. There are so many hot designers all over the world, and you’ve already seen a number of my favourite pieces. Most of these are British, but interestingly they’re all made in Italy.
So I’m sure you’ve all heard about Gel insoles, theres a lot of info flying about about them and I’ve definitely heard conflicting information, and sometimes you might wonder if a reviewer has been paid, or influenced in some way to write this. I shall try to approach this as objectively as possible, bringing in various points of view.
First of all lets see how these things work, the idea is the gel moulds to your feet and reduces the pressure on your feet, the gel is also meant to absorb the impact of walking. Now these things are do genuinely reduce pressure while standing, and do give you an extra half hour of so of standing, but if you walk properly most of the impact is taken by your heel and straight up your body so it doesn’t make much of a difference, on the other hand if the shoe is loose it really messes your balance up while walking, especially if the insole doesn’t fit properly.
I’ve noticed in recent years there have been a number of articles about how shoes aren’t fitting properly and perhaps average shoe sizes are going up, and doing a lot of vintage shopping perhaps I’ve noticed a third observation. So with this too-big-too-small trend in modern day, it seems apt to call it Cinderella syndrome.
Now first I’ll start by saying I’ve always believed I took an UK 8, and always been under the impression that translated to a European 41 and a 10.5 in the US. Apparently that isn’t totally correct, and according to the Society of Shoefitters actually, UK7=EU41, now this was in an article in the Daily Mail which means one should take this information with a good shovel of salt, the one thing I can take from this article is to forget UK sizes and know my European size which is 40.5 (give or take ½ a size each way).
With flares seeing their return from the cold the whole appeal for a more delicate shoe is quite the natural direction, the weight of these massive bell bottoms when paired with a clunky design makes you look like a bottom heavy hangover from a 70’s disco. On the other hand stilettos are a perfect counter to all that fabric of the trouser, pick a intricate design or a print that you can flash a little with each step.
Do you ever wonder why we wear heels, despite the pain it causes some of us? It seems a obvious solution to simply avoid wearing them, however the raison d’etre behind our choice stems from our more evolved social part of our mind (Freud calls this the super-ego) wanting to conform to social or peer pressure to wear what is expected. As adults these norms are set out by the media, social or otherwise.
Some people seem to live in heels, they never suffer pain and it’s as if its perfectly normal to wear them all the time. It comes from starting the right way, building positively with the right frame of mind. Through good experiences, all of a sudden hurdles seem lower and bridges easier to cross, you will be more likely to succeed. That’s a great ideal, but many of people already have strong negative impressions of heels. The more primitive (Freudian id) part of our mind is the instinctive part, it seeks pleasure and avoids suffering. As such the id strongly remembers negative experiences and will try to avoid such situations again. This puts the id and super-ego in conflict, with the stronger determining the choice of footwear.