How to make your high heels comfortable advice for high heel shoe buyers from Stuart Weitzman, shoe designer:
"The only reliable alteration to a shoe that does not hold the foot properly is to add a foam pad filler," Weitzman advises. "But only if such filler does not make the shoe uncomfortably tight. If the heel is higher than the lady is used to wearing, it will most logically be a difficult adjustment for her; and of course, if it is not comfortable when tried on, it should be put back in the box and returned to the shelf."
Weitzman's tip for making sure the shoe is a comfortable fit is to try it on. "Try it on," he says. "Then walk around the store a few times. If it’s tight, don’t assume it will stretch. And if it slips in the heel, assume it will always do that."
I totally agree with Mr. Weitzman. I couldn’t have said it better myself. The most important thing for a good fit in high heels is for the foot to be held properly inside a shoe. This is ideally done by the shoe itself – if you are really lucky in a perfect fit of a store bought shoe or if the shoe has been custom made for you.
Weitzman shoes are among the top five best fitting and most comfortable shoes that you can buy in North America. The others are Cole Haan, Naturalizer, Nine West and Corso Como. This is according to female New York lawyers’ comments in the blog Corporette.com "Corporette Guide to Comfortable Heels". However even a reasonably well fitting high heel shoe is subject to gravity - so it can always use extra cushioning at the ball of the foot area and something to help keep the foot at the exact place inside the shoe where the shoe designer intended it to be.
If the fit is good but not ‘custom’, plus if you are subject to gravity (you live on earth, not in a space station), you can add a sculpted PORON foam insert to make the shoe a custom fit for you. A foam insert that is considered excellent by customers is ‘Killer Heels Comfort’ inserts for high heels made of PORON polyurethane foam in two parts.
This innovative patented new solution for high heel comfort addresses both the HORIZONAL SURFACES AND THE VERTICAL SURFACES in heels. It is a high heel shoe insert that is designed in a completely new way, from the ground up. It does not copy the functions of any other design on the market. No other insert for high heels addresses the fact that most of the problems and pain in high heels is related to the force of gravity due to the vertical angle of the ramp in heels.
Killer Heels Comfort patented inserts stop forward slide, eliminate heel gaps and keep the wearers’ weight over the shoe heels. It’s the only ergonomic high heel insert that allows for normal toe function of balance and propulsion. Sculpted polyurethane PORON foam that is bevelled at the edges and has a raised toe grip is best for ball of foot comfort because it does not crowd the shoe or feel lumpy underfoot. The toe grip under the middle three toes helps to physically keep the foot in place to keep the fore foot from sliding forward or sideways either medially or laterally.
Most high heel insoles or 3/4 high heel insoles are too bulky for high heels and crowd the toes because they fill up the toe box at the sides or raise the foot up under the heel making the ramp steeper and problems of high heel wearing worse. If high heel insoles are gel insoles they cannot be customized to length of foot, become slippery when damp or come loose from the shoe. They show underfoot in sandals or mules.
The x-ray photo of a foot with shoe inserts added at the front of the heel and under the forefoot is an explanation of the features of the two-part high heel inserts. These are features that customers recognize and they give Killer Heels Comfort inserts five star reviews!