The Daily Telegraph - Features
Why comfy shoes are a runway success
Roksanda is infusing FitFlop with its trademark arty, glamorous attitude, says Lisa Armstrong
FitFlop, the footwear company that specialises in comfort, was conceived by its founder Marcia Kilgore, after an evening wearing agonising heels. “I bought a really fabulous, crazy-expensive pair of shoes that I had to remove after one hour because they were so painful”. Two decades later, FitFlop shoes are the unlikely go-to for Uma Thurman, Damon Albarn and Laura Bailey. Now, designer Roksanda is unashamedly combining comfort with fashion and sprinkling some of her trademark arty, glamorous attitude onto FitFlop in the process, infusing them with her offbeat colour combinations. Her her latest catwalk show during London Fashion Week featured three of Fitflop’s existing styles: the Shuv leather clog, the Gen-FF short sheepskin and the japanese inspired iQushion. This passion for flats is not because she’s 5ft 11in. “I love heels sometimes,” says Roksanda. “But I tend to save them for a trouser suit. Flats, for me, are what you wear with a long evening dress. I like opposites, but at the same time, I don’t believe in rules. Everyone should wear what makes them feel good.” For luxury artisanal London fashion labels like Roksanda, collaborations with bigger brands can be a tempting source of income, especially while they’re still recovering from the pandemic. Stodgy megabrands are often keen to link up with much more interesting fashion creatives in the hope that osmosis will happen – sometimes to the detriment of both parties. But Roksanda has been canny about her professional liaisons. Barbour, Fila, Lululemon and now FitFlop have all been about movement and technology that she wouldn’t normally access. “I really care about function and comfort and like to elevate it. Even my most glamorous of clients need to be practical some days, she says. She was impressed by the technology she discovered at FitFlop. Kilgore visited universities all over the UK, met biomechanics and scientists to come up with the first prototypes. “Some 47,000 miles later, I found the right team at London’s South Bank University”. Even then, the first prototype looked like “a foamy lump of coal with two ropes. I said ‘I don’t care if that thing is an entire yoga class for my body. It’s hideous’.”
Seventeen years on, the British-based brand, which sells in 73 countries is not a conventional beauty. There are no heels or dainty toes. If you don’t like flatforms, there’s nothing for you to see here. But if you do, you’re in for a foot massage the whole time you’re wearing them. Without getting too technical, this is largely thanks to a micro “wobble-board” embedded in the thickest cushioned soles that works with the body’s alignment.
The key to happy feet, according to Kilgore, “is that as much of the foot as possible comes into contact with the ground – although not slabs of hard pavement. That’s where a good shoe comes in. Our wobble-boards recreate the feeling of walking across soft earth.”
I tell her I’m surprised that the Shuv is backless, as I thought anatomically, the ideal is maximum support right up to the ankle. “That’s a misconception. What matters is that a foot should be able to flex fully. Having your heel encased in something that doesn’t hold it properly is actually not good for your gait. So a well-designed backless shoe that frees the heel to naturally land where it wants is better.”
While the rise of the “ugly” fashion shoe cleared a path for FitFlop to get on to more styleconscious feet, no one has so far been able to copy FitFlop’s technology. “Frankly I’m amazed that with all this focus on wellness, we still ignore the health of our feet,” says Kilgore. “All we need to do is tune in to how much better we feel when our feet are looked after. After all, we were barefoot a lot longer than we’ve been in shoes.”