I got to thinking about the fact that some heels are easier to walk in than others, even though they’re the same height and even the same pitch. I suspected it had a lot to do with whether the heels were set far back on the shoe or were tucked underneath the foot (undershot). Remember, your weight is carried down to the ground through your ankle bone, so when you stride along and the very back of the heel hits the ground first, any weight you put on that foot is carried down the white line:

As your full weight shifts to that foot, the force goes straight down the black line:

The problem is that during the fraction of a second it takes for your ankle to rotate through that small angle, you’re in a precarious situation with your ankle bent and a lot of pressure on that little bitty heel tip. You scarcely notice it, usually: allowing for this effect is what learning to wear heels is all about. But that’s the real reason some people break ankles walking in heels even on level surfaces – their weight goes off-center during that critical split second, and over they go.

To test my guess I did what any self-respecting scientist would do: I performed an experiment. I looked over my collection to find a couple of pairs with a good contrast of setbacks on heels of the same height. My Prada slingbacks and my Harley-Davidson mules (talk about a style contrast!) are a perfect example of the extremes:

The Harleys are so severely undershot that it tempts me to take too long a stride, with the result that my foot skids out in front of me and I go right on my fanny (a fact confirmed by involuntary experiment!). By contrast, the Pradas cut down the length of my stride so my ankle doesn’t have to bend through too much of an angle. The effect of all this is to change one’s gait, not just in short strides versus long, but even in the degree one can strut, swagger, or sway (for lack of more elegant descriptors).

I found I’m not the only one who notices this. Some years ago I had a pair of Via Spiga boots with a modest 4” heel (not at all a steep pitch on my size 11) that was pretty radically set back. I tried for a week to get used to them, but finally gave up and took them to a local charity shop. When the young girl at the counter accepted them she whispered so her boss couldn’t hear, “I had a pair of these once, but I could never learn to walk in them!”

Here are some of my shoes, on the same rack as last time. Not all clogs this time – decided to put in a few sandals. Shoes that are also on my page of the My Collection section on this site are noted. As before, reading left to right and top to bottom:

Prada sandals (collection)

YSL leopard print sandals (collection)

Cole Haan suede clogs (collection)

Cole Haan “cowboy” clogs (collection)

Donald J. Pliner suede clogs, lower heel than I usually pick, but still graceful

Another pair of the Donald J. Pliner clogs, smooth leather. I wear these more than the suede not because I prefer them, but because the reddish-brown dust of the New Mexico
desert looks much better on them than it does on black suede.

MICHAEL Michael Kors clogs (collection)

MICHAEL Michael Kors brown fur-lined clogs, the brown suede version of the black My Collection ones, bought a few months later at a January sale.

Patchwork velvet Coach clogs, apparently a version of the highly successful Coach patchwork clogs of a decade or so ago. Made since Coach outsourced some manufacture to China. I can’t complain – the shape is actually a better fit to my wide foot.

Coach brown-white-gold patchwork clogs (collection)

BCBG Max Azria sandals (collection)

MiuMiu clogs (collection)

MICHAEL Michael Kors studded clogs. To tell the truth, I probably wouldn’t have bought these if they hadn’t been offered at such an outrageously low sale price. I tend to wear them to the laundromat.

A re-issue of the original, classic Coach patchwork clogs: patent, leopard, suede, metallic, embroidery, logo – a real index of decorative shoe material. These from the China factory, even wider than the wooden-soled variety (wear with heavy socks!).

Okay, I’ve bored you enough with the me-me-me stuff. Next time I’ll explore some other minuscule aspect of shoe arcana.

Of course the heel height by itself doesn’t tell the whole story. Chopines were actually cute little flats perched on a tower to keep milady’s feet out of the muck of the streets, and Balenciaga’s 7.5 inch heels had a platform half that height, as shown by the line.

What really sets the amount of staggering a heel produces is the pitch, the angle of your sole in the shoe. My Prada mules have 5 inch heels, my MiuMiu’s have 6 inch heels and a 1 inch platform – both have the same lift (heel above toe), but the MiuMiu’s are vastly easier to walk in because of exactly how the front part of the shoe is treated. Here’s an example, a comparison of a Versace shoe (left) with a Louboutin.

Even with the platform, the lift of the CL is higher, but the pitch it forces on your foot is less steep because it places the bend in your foot a little nearer the toes. If you stand barefoot and raise your heel gradually, you’ll feel the contact point on the ball of your foot move forward. Here’s what it looks like inside the shoe (excuse the blue lines – a friend sent me this to illustrate something else).

Around the point marked B, see how the foot doesn’t really touch the shoe, and note that some parts of the foot show whiter than others. White means stress – the pressure on the sole is greatest at the arrow. But near B the white shows that the foot is stressed there also, in that case because there is no support from the shoe. The bend of the shoe should have been closer to that of the foot for better support, and it would have reduced the pitch angle as well..

I suspect there’s a good bit of variation in where people’s feet bend, so the Versace shoe and the CL would each be perfect for someone who was comfortable in them. But this means that in addition to the height of the heel (corrected for the thickness of the platform) the structure of the shoe can determine whether a particular heel is wearable.

So to those who say “I just can’t wear anything over 2 (or 3, or 4) inch heels”, I say “Maybe you just haven’t found your ideal shoemaker!”

I’m at a loss for words!

I usually buy shoes in brick-and-mortar stores, so I can try them on. Of the very few I’ve tried to buy on line, I’ve had to send back at least half on grounds of size. I’m beginning to learn that’s because there really are no effective standards of size. Different designers, different manufacturers, different nations all produce their shoes on the basis of their own idea of what a size so-and-so is. Here’s an example:

My size US 11 corresponds to the following bunch of sizes:
Euro 41, according to Prada
Euro 42, according to YSL and Marc Jacobs
Euro 43, according to Cole Haan and Baby Phat
Euro 44, according to Payless

And what is “Euro”? On the size chart at Saks 5th Avenue, my 11 is a French 42 or an Italian 41, but Jean Paul Gaultier (French) says it’s 41 and Giuseppi Zanotti (Italian) says it’s 42 (Prada and YSL stick to their national standards).

Okay, you say, US size 11 is about at the size limit for average production – maybe that’s the problem. What about a more average size? Okay, let’s try a good, solid US 7:

Euro 37, according to most makers
But 37.5 according to Marc Jacobs,
38.5 according to Payless,
And Saks says 37 for Italy and 38 for France

Add to this the different structure of sandals, pumps, boots, clogs, etc. and you can see the source of the problem. One solution I’ve found if I’m shopping online for a brand I haven’t tried is to chat briefly before specifying a size, to see what they say about Euro equivalent (or French, or whatever). Sometimes it helps – it doesn’t always.

Let’s face it: size is a crapshoot. But if you want to know how sizes are MEANT to be measured, good old Wikipedia will give you an exact answer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_sizes

Loafers with some lift to the heel have been around pretty much forever, but mostly in the form of soccer mom wedges or Proper Office chunk heels. It was Stefano Pilati, in his first season at YSL, who created what I think of as the first Killer Heel loafer.

John Galliano did his own version,

Gucci put a slingback on it

and Chloe set it on a megawedge

Now it’s everywhere, from Victoria’s Secret

to Twolips

and Zappos even has a whole category for it in the Search By Style section.

I must say, as a gender-blending form I think it combines masculine and feminine elements more gracefully than most of the oxfords now being shown. Maybe it’s just me, but I see the oxford carrying a message of “elderly”, not just retro or tailored.

Why did I start collecting clogs? I often wonder, myself. They’re comfortable, of course, especially if the heel is high enough that gravity keeps your foot in place. If you walk quickly, which I usually do, the totally flat ones tend to scoot off ahead of you, which is severely undignified. Besides, without a high heel they can’t be hung on my closet rack. (The poor wedges have to hide under the bed with the dust bunnies.)

Here’s a picture of my closet rack from about four years ago, about the time I had to admit I was truly a collector.

Reading from left to right and top to bottom, the brands were:
MICHAEL Michael Kors. He has three brands, all bearing his name in various forms. I wonder if that’s more egotistical than blogging? But he makes good shoes and they are really easy to wear all day, so he has more of a right to be egotistical than I do.

Coach, and Coach again, two colors of the same thing. Pricier than the MICHAEL, but the MICHAEL is fully lined with faux fur and the Coach have fur only on the collar. See why I like MMK?

Then another Coach. Funny thing about that pair: they are a genuine Coach product, but at some point they began outsourcing to China instead of Italy where Coach always used to come from. In Italian Coach I take a size 11 (oops!), but in Chinese Coach these 10’s are almost too big.

Next come two genuine Italian Coaches, a purple and a brown. They didn’t even make an 11 in these, so I took a chance and got 10’s. They’re fine until about noon, at which time both my big toes are in big trouble.

Next we go way downmarket: Wild Rose. I had missed the first run of Coach patchwork clogs, which became a classic, but when these showed up at Burlington Coat Factory at $10, I couldn’t resist. Four years later, I still don’t know how they feel to wear.

Downmarket again, Soda. Good looking, faux leather but perforated so it breathes, a rather hard and noisy faux wood sole. Another Chinese generous size 10. They look a lot like the first pair of clogs I ever had, Steve Madden. I loved the style, but long ago I had to acknowledge that I do not have Steve Madden-shaped feet, no matter the size.

Ah, the very First Pair Of Coach I bought! Italy, SOFT leather, an honest size 11, and a fringe. I must have been prescient – the rest of the world just started loving fringe this year. Wore these right out of the store, wore them all day, still wearing them often. Take that, Wild Rose!

Next, Fringy Italian Coach, part 2 (though you can scarcely see the fringe in the photo). A bit firmer leather, which is good for supporting your ankles.

Back to the downmarket crowd, Dollhouse. Furry fringe and a cute little tassel adorn these on-sale-for-$5-and-disposed-of-soon-after clogs. (Remember, it’s a 4 year old picture. I promise to take a current one fairly soon.)

Tommy Hilfiger, with patriotic little Hilfiger stripes on the edge and higher-than average blocky heels. Bought for $15 on super January sale at Macys Las Vegas in ’04.

Franco Sarto “tuxedo” shoes, black suede with black calf trim. Curiously comfortable on my rather wide feet, they are sized as an elegantly slim 10. I’ve put a lot of Las Vegas shopping miles on them in the past 5 years.

Last, Carlos Santana patchwork leather. Bought the year before at Macys LV, they suffered a catastrophic splash of some unidentified automotive fluid in a parking lot.

So much for that photo, and so much for my first blog entry. Oh, I suppose I should identify myself, at least as much of self as can be transmitted digitally. I am albinard (small a). I chose my name from Albinard (capital A), a mythical character in my first (unpublished) novel. I figure a mythical character in a work of fiction that has never appeared in print is about the proper level of reality to present to the web.