You Think?

Said one of my favourite senior consultants as he saw me tottering to the carpark, “Stilettoes must have been invented by men so that they can watch women sway.”

Shoe-Related Review: Insolia High Heel Inserts

Image from Insolia website

I am an enormous fan of shoe paraphernalia. My latest love is Insolia inserts. All my adult life, the unfortunate fact of my baby feet has never ceased to cause me grief. I blister like eggs in a pan and suffer terrible forefoot pain in high heels. Much to my surprise, and at the risk of sounding like a paid advert, these inserts actually do help with my foot woes. 

They don’t look like they’d help, because they’re quite small and don’t even extend beyond the heel and arch areas. However, that’s because they work not by cushioning, but by producing weight shift from the balls to the heels of the feet.

They’re finicky to attach – quite a bit of trial and error is involved, but there are detailed instructions in the packet. I find that mine work best 5 – 7mm from the back of the shoe and pointing more toward the big toe.

The final effect is increased wearability of the shoe. My worst pair – synthetic gold closed-toe pointies with two-and-a-half-inch heels – went from hell to borderline manageable. My feet don’t hurt half as much in shoes that were previously tortuous. Strangely enough, the inserts also seem to reduce blistering, and do provide a touch of arch support. At the end of the day, I’m not in such a rush to chuck off my shoes. When I do, my feet don’t need to sigh in tremendous relief.

These inserts are not meant to be used with flat shoes, and I suspect that folks with pre-existing heel pain wouldn’t benefit from them either. Indeed, the Insolia website says that it works for roughly 8 out of 10 women.

At over S$13 a pair, Insolia inserts are not cheap. Furthermore, they are not meant to be transferred from shoe to shoe. I wouldn’t put them into every heeled shoe I own, just the killer/cuter/more expensive ones. If they can make these shoes wearable, they’re worth it.

How To Break In New Shoes

I always avoided closed-toe shoes because they were painful. They would pinch my toes and blister my heels, and the only way I could wear them was with lots of Handiplast.

It didn’t really bother me until recently. Suddenly I felt the urge to look polished, which sandals and open-toes can’t always achieve. I blame tulip skirts. The blouse-and-tulip-skirt combo won’t do its sexy secretary look without closed-toe heeled pumps. And stockings. I’ve never been able to wear stockings with open-toes without feeling a bit trashy.

So closed-toes it had to be. I bought a pair of champagne pointy-toes and another pair of purple patent round-toes (which Mr. Manx later informed me look like a pair of brinjals).

Ouch. Ouch.

Thanking God for the Internet, I began researching ways to make these shoes wearable. I did NOT dare to try any of the following:

1. Bite the shoes. I kid you not. This is an old Chinese belief. You bite them before they bite you.
2. Pack them with wet newspaper or a Ziplocked bag of water, then put them in the freezer. This actually sounds fairly reasonable, but my groceries would object.
3. Run over them with a car.
4. Or use a hammer.
5. Wear the shoes. Stand in a basin of warm water. Alternatively, take a hot shower for 20 minutes. Get out of the water and walk around till the shoes dry. Or disintegrate.
6. Stuff them with potatoes. I don’t know why.
7. Oil them and bake them. (With the potatoes?)
8. Pee in them. You’ll never get blisters from shoes you refuse to wear.

What IS helpful, though, are socks. Thick socks. I pinched an old pair of Mr. Manx’s and put them on before stuffing my feet into the new shoes. I walked around like that, strictly at home, for half an hour, three days in a row. I looked like a bad joke, but heck, the shoes fit well thereafter! Much less pinching.

The second helpful thing was a thick white candle. Rubbed over rough bits like heels and seams, it really does help to prevent friction blisters.

The third thing that helped were Insolia inserts. More about them in a later post. They do nothing for pinchy shoes, but work wonders for high heels that kill the balls of the feet.

Of course, the treated shoes still need to be worn and given time before they really give in and learn the contours of the feet.

My own testament is that I wore the brinjal shoes out for the very first time to a Jason Mraz concert, which turned out to be a stand-up-and-groove-all-the-way concert, and my feet were absolutely fine. Hurray for old sports socks!