These Are the High Heels of the Future, Brought to You by Technologists
Image: Kinetic Traces

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These Are the High Heels of the Future, Brought to You by Technologists

No pain.

Dolly Singh is a former recruiter at SpaceX in Los Angeles. There, she spent hours every day walking the floors of the rocket factory in her footwear of choice: high heels.

And it hurt.

"Women have been taught or are just sort of sold into believing it that pain equals beauty or that beauty equals pain or that fashion equals pain and that association is OK," she said. "I don't think we should have to hurt ourselves in order to look good and feel good."

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It was then that she realized she didn't have the accept the typical, toe-pinching, arch-demolishing heels that dominate store shelves. "I happen to have a network of some of the world's smartest people," she said to herself. "Maybe I should do something about it and stop complaining."

That something was creating Thesis Couture, a company devoted to applying the same basic principles that are used in making rockets to making high heels. She hired former astronauts and rocket scientists who weren't necessarily drawn to the work because they want to make heels more comfortable—they were interested in the problem Singh proposed.

"If you had to build the worlds' smallest bridge, how would you do that and make it fit inside of a high heel? Its really more about the fundamental of the underlying physics than the actual problem," she said.

Most high heels are built around a flat metal plate, Singh says. A stiletto props up the foot enough that you are walking around on your toes. But there isn't any real sense of the foot resting in the shoe.

"If you had to build the worlds' smallest bridge, how would you do that and make it fit inside of a high heel?"

"When you have a wedge you can sort of feel the structure beneath your foot. That's why you can wear a wedge for a lot longer," explains Singh. "Instead of 80 percent of the weight falling into a very concentrated well at the ball of your feet, we want to sort of distribute it back and out so we have about 50 percent of the weight."

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Her shoe doesn't just redistribute weight when the foot impacts with the ground. The heel, which will be released later this year, has a recreated heel shank made of plastics rather than steel. That too changes the way the weight is distributed, thus alleviating pain.

"We're trying to make a stiletto shoe that feels and functions like a wedge," she said.

Looks Like a Pump…Feels Like A Sneaker?

Singh isn't the only own trying to improve the shoes she loves.

Last year in Europe, designer Silvia Fado worked with an architect and engineer to create heels with mechanisms that absorb shock the same way sneakers do. One of her shoes, for example, replaces a stiletto heel, traditionally a steel pole, with a hydraulic piston.

The pistons, or springs, were specially made for her collection and provide a bouncy feeling in the heel—a sort of give and take that occurs when the heel pushes down on the shoe—a very different sensation from the steel pole that holds the foot upright.

Another one of her shoes, which are sold under the line Kinetic Traces, uses rubber balls between the sole and the heel, providing a sensation that may be similar to walking on a trampoline.

Fado also worked with a vascular surgeon who worked to ensure the impact of each step was beneficial for blood circulation.

"The principal functions of footwear are often sacrificed in fashion," she said.

Fashion Victims

High heels do real damage. According to a recent study in The Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery, injury rates from wearing high heels doubled between 2002-2012. Researchers aren't sure why, although it may be a result of changing fashion styles or more women wearing heels. Most of the injuries were the results of falls.

In another study published in The Journal of Applied Physiology in 2012, researchers found that regular heel wearers moved with shorter strides; their feet perpetually in a flexed-toe Barbie-doll-esque motion. They walked this way, even when barefoot—and had shortened their calf muscles.

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Image: Kinetic Traces

"During walking, our data show that because the Achilles tendon is stiffer in long-term heel wearers, the calf muscles are stretched more and stretched faster compared to when walking in flat shoes," said Neil Cronin, a biomechanics researcher and one of the researchers in the 2012 study. "We know that this leads to an increase in energy cost in these muscles."

Cronin says to lessen the strains of wearing heels, there is the obvious—don't wear them at all. But if you're not going to do that, then consider wearing them no more than one or two times a week which should help limit the chance of permanent structural changes happening to the muscles and tendons.

Living the High Life

Despite the physical harm that comes from wearing heels, they've been worn for centuries and probably aren't going away anytime soon.

Valerie Steele, a fashion historian and the curator and director of The Museum at The Fashion Institute of Technology, said there have been jokes dating back to the 18th century about how difficult they were to walk in. Yet through it all, they are worn for a reason.

"Your whole body posture is changed," she explained, "because essentially your bosom is thrown out and your bottom is thrown out and your tummy is pushed back so you sort of look simultaneously taller, thinner and curvier at the same time."

Even though women may have been complaining about the discomfort of high heels for centuries, Steele says, it has only been in the last few decades that shoe designers decided to address the issue.

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There's Julian Hakes, an architect whose 2013 "Mojito" heel drew inspiration from structural engineering —he used 3-D printing to produce an archless slip-on that spirals around the foot, using bridge-support principles. He reportedly wanted to know why heels needed a foot plate. Hey Lady shoes use the toe box from a dancer's shoe and insoles and arch supports from a running shoe; Aerosoles shoes use foam in the footbed that supposedly bends with the shoe. Easy Spirit pumps, which according to the company's website are filled with millions of nitrogen-filled micro-bubbles that make the shoe comfortable and light.

But to get comfort with the technology Singh and Fado are incorporating into footwear isn't cheap—Singh's shoes go on sale in the fall at nearly a thousand dollars. Fado's sell in select boutiques for nearly $2,000.

Toeing the Line

Cronin is skeptical about design that would make heels more comfortable.

"Many of the negative effects of high heels stem from the unnatural foot posture that is caused by high heels," he said, pointing out that it may be possible to reduce foot pain using insoles but it's unknown if this actually limits structural changes in and around the foot; nor is it known how changes in shoe characteristics might have knock-on effects at other joints like the knee or hip.

"Since these ideas are quite new, I suspect it will be many years—and many long-term follow-up studies—before we can say whether or not the negative effects of heels can be negated in this way."

In the meantime though, perhaps heel wearers can begin to feel as good as they look.