This blog entry works for both tall AND short women. How many times have you gone to a shoe store and found the perfect dress shoe but in the wrong heel height?
Personally, I tend to walk through stores with one goal in mind: low heels, low heels, low heels! I realize that some people’s reaction to that (my cousin, Mike, for instance) would be, “No! Be proud of your height! Wear those heels! Work what God gave you!” And I do on occasion and, of course, those people are right — it makes me feel sexier, more professional, etc. BUT every other day when I just want to go to work or go to a dressy function with my boyfriend who’s slightly shorter than me, I am not in search of that extra inch or two. I would love to be able to go to a shoe store (online or in person) and find ANY shoe that I fancy in whatever heel height I desire. I can’t even remember the amount of times I’ve found shoes that I adore … in my size! … and then put them down because I’d rather have a lower heel. I’m assuming other tall women have this problem (speak up if you do/don’t!) and shorter women probably have the opposite problem. And after many conversations with some of my female coworkers in their 50s, I’ve learned that high heels can actually become increasingly painful to wear the more you age.
So this brings me to my point of adjustable shoes. I did a quick Google search to find that I’m not the first to have this idea (surprise, surprise!) but I couldn’t find it executed exactly how I’m picturing. I found a site/store, CAMiLEON, that makes dress shoes with adjustable-height heels built in:
CAMiLEON Heels – the first fully-functioning, adjustable height high heel shoe for women. The ability to vary heel height according to need or desire clearly provides substantial positive effects for women who choose to wear high-heeled shoes.
Extremely good idea but they also start out at about $210 per pair and usually only go up to size 10 or 10.5.
I think it would be extremely lucrative for a company to create styles of dress shoes (and boots, too) that can be purchased with anywhere from 1″-3″-heel heights. This would obviously be much easier for an online store to stock. For instance, Zappos.com, which has a phenomenal assortment of shoes to begin with, could possibly add that feature and allow shoppers to choose their heel height just as they choose their size or color!
Ahhh one can only dream, I guess!