How I made my good sling back high heels even better!
You can make good shoes better and more wearable, but if you have bad shoes there is nothing you can do except get rid of them. Luckily the Aldo shoes I recently bought were already quite good shoes that fit well, so I was able to make them much better with special high heel shoe inserts. They are now my favorite high heeled footwear to wear all day at the law office where I work. These nice-looking nude colour shoes with pointed toes, sling backs and 2 ¾ inch heels are suitable with any office skirt outfits.
Aldo shoes appear to be well made and for me are easy to walk in and have a natural good fit – but in the past they lacked adequate cushioning for me. This is why when I learned that Aldo had designed high heeled shoes with special cushioning called PillowWalk I was delighted and immediately ordered myself a pair to try them out and see what they were like. The shoes I bought are Aldo brand shoes of a design called Gavedessi with the new PillowWalk cushioning.
The Pillow Walk cushioning was a big improvement over Aldo high heeled shoes I was used to with practically no cushioning, but it did not fully live up to its promise particularly in stabilizing shoes or cushioning correctly under the ball of the foot. The added cushioning helped to add some comfort, but it did not resolve two common problems of high heeled footwear which is that feet slide forwards crushing toes and in sling back shoes or sandals heels slide sideways off the heel of the shoe. My solution was to add rebounding polyurethane shoe inserts especially designed for high heels where there is restricted space. My good shoes immediately changed to better perfectly cushioned shoes. I outline below my experience with wearing my new slingbacks without shoe inserts and with custom fit polyurethane shoe inserts.
My slingbacks fit me very well after a slight adjustment to shorten the heel straps. To test out my new shoes I wore them to work for a day at the office where I spend about half the time walking about. I made observations about the performance of my shoes throughout the day. Although the heels, at 2 ¾ inch, do not create a steep foot ramp I did feel my feet sliding forwards into the pointed toe end of the shoes. My toes pinched together so by the end of the day my toes hurt in the area between the big toe and my first toe, and the ends of my big toes hurt from being forced into the narrow tips of the shoes. The shoes felt wobbly at the heel end because my feet slid sideways unpredictably throughout the day. A problem was created by the PillowWalk cushioning under the heel of the foot because of the smooth dome there that made my feet slip sideways off my slingback shoes. The PillowWalk cushioning is in two thicknesses. The cushioning is thinner under the heel and under the arch and then doubles in thickness under the forefoot. The transition from thinner to thicker is under the middle metatarsal. This leaves half of the middle metatarsal, on which the pressure is greatest in high heels, with only a thin cushioning under it. It appears that the thicker cushioning is positioned too far forward in the shoe to be effective in adding comfort in the middle of the ball of the foot.
The next day of work I wore my new high heels again, but this time with the addition of polyurethane Killer Heels Comfort brand ergonomic high heel shoe cushions designed with a toe grip to stop feet from sliding forward down the ramp inside high heels, stabilizing the foot plus e and cushion high heels. My Gavedessi slingbacks immediately felt very stable on my feet. My feet were no longer sliding forwards pinching my toes and my heels were not slipping sideways and falling off the heels of my shoes. My slingbacks felt very stable on my feet, as stable as laced up runners. The polyurethane rebounding foam cushions are made in two parts to provide ultimate comfort in high heels. One foam piece fits under the ball of the foot to cushion directly at the middle metatarsal under the ball of the foot, plus has toe grips to stop the forefoot from sliding forward or sideways. A second foam piece fits in front of the heel of the foot preventing it from sliding forward or slipping sideways off the heel of the shoe in an open heeled shoe. In pumps or other closed at the heel high heeled footwear the front of the heel piece keeps the heel of the foot in its correct position adding to overall comfort of the foot and a better fit because the foot is stopped from sliding forwards.
The conclusion of my test is that placing custom fit polyurethane foam inserts into good slingbacks makes a big difference in comfort, especially for all day wear. The inserts made my good slingbacks better.
