"It's like the karate punch. It doesn't have to hit hard, but it hits you fast," says Ray Fredericksen, who runs Sport Biomechanics, a Michigan consulting company that tests footwear for comfort and safety.
Naturalizer, founded in 1927, essentially introduced the notion that a high heel shoe could be comfortable. From the beginning, the company's mission was to create shoes that are both stylish and wearable. Brands such as Easy Spirit and Aerosole followed. In 2000, for instance, Easy Spirit introduced a line of leather business shoes enhanced with Lycra. Cole Haan has incorporated Nike cushioning techniques in some of its dress footwear -- from boots to mules. Geox, an Italian brand that recently opened its first U.S. store in New York, incorporates a porous but waterproof membrane into its shoes that allows air to circulate around the feet, keeping them cool and dry. Other labels, such as Taryn Rose and Trippen, focus on comfort while emphasizing eclectic, artsy and luxury styling.
For decades, companies have been stuffing their shoes full of proprietary padding and cushioning technology. They have painstakingly created lasts -- the forms around which the body of the shoe is molded -- that are welcoming to as many feet as possible. The styling generally emphasizes a roomy toe box, rather than a pointed and constricting one. The heels, when they rise above an inch, are chunky to provide stability and lessen the effect of all those pounds of force shooting through the body.
The "comfort shoe" market, which includes high-tech heels as well as traditional flats like Mephisto and Ecco, has been growing over the past few years and its customer base has been getting younger, according to Footwear News. In the 1990s, the main audience for these shoes were folks in their fifties. Now women in their thirties have become customers. Women spent more than $1 billion on comfort shoes last year, according to the NPD Group, which tracks retail sales.
The lengths to which companies will go to research, create and test their shoes is both admirable and absurd. The improvements in high heels have been incremental, the technology ever-changing and bragging rights quickly claimed. Two enterprising companies -- one on the East Coast and the other on the West -- are indicative of the newest high-heel cobblers currently thumping their chests.
Oh! shoes, based in Portland, Ore., is trying to solve the high-heel conundrum by slowing the speed at which force is absorbed by the body. By dissipating the impact, the body is protected from the equivalent of a sucker punch.
Insolia, in New Hampshire, focuses on geometry. Its designs decrease the angle at which the foot rests in the shoe, essentially trying to make a three-inch heel feel like a one-inch version.
The two companies have rolled out podiatrists and orthopedic surgeons to testify to the comfort of their wares. They have incorporated technology gleaned from military footwear, ski boots and hiking shoes. They have sent their pumps out for biomechanical testing in order to measure stability, cushioning and the rate of impact absorption. One male product developer has even clomped around his neighborhood in a pair of size 11 heels to get a firsthand understanding of what it means to walk in a pair of two-inch sling-backs.
The idea for Insolia was born a few years ago when a woman issued a challenge to her podiatrist, Howard Dananberg, who had dabbled in shoe construction. So, Mr. Bigshot, she said, since you helped make sneakers so comfortable, make me a comfortable high heel.
"Is it possible?" Dananberg asked himself. "In the beginning, I thought no. . . . But I didn't exactly know why heels hurt."
So Dananberg put on a tie -- to look like a researcher rather than a lothario -- and stood on the corner at Lexington and 48th Street, not too far from Grand Central Terminal, and stopped women on the street. "I said, 'Can I ask you a question about high heels?' "
"There was a segment that said, 'If you touch my shoes, I'll kill you.' "
Finally, though, he learned that high heels mimic the dynamics of walking downhill. "When you stand in high heels, it's like a ramp. All the weight goes to the ball of the foot," he says.
Runway models, with their backward-tilting torsos and galloping-horse gait, have learned to accommodate four- and five-inch heels by doing a balancing act. A woman's pelvis -- broader than a man's -- helps to put a sway in her gait that allows her to negotiate high heels. "In-shoe" pressure testing helped Dananberg analyze how the foot bears weight inside a shoe. And he began to wonder, "What if I shift the weight back and create a balance closer to 50-50? A balance like when you're wearing flats?"
