A letter from a reader

At 62, I finally worked out that it was never the straps. It was what my foot was standing on.

You should picture me writing this at the kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold beside me, because that is exactly how slowly it has come. I am not a writer, and what another woman puts on her feet in February has never been any of my business.

But three women asked me about these at the markets in the one morning, two of them at the same stall, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started with my sister Carol, who watched me do something I have apparently been doing for years without noticing. We had been out about an hour. I stopped, put a hand on a shop window, and loosened the buckle on my sandal a notch. Then ten minutes later I did it again.

You have adjusted those three times since we parked, Maggie. Three times. Do you know you do that?

I did not know I did that. I have been doing it every summer for I could not tell you how many years, and I had never once counted it as a problem. It was simply what happens to feet in the heat.

Nobody decides to spend fifteen summers fiddling with a buckle. It happens half a notch at a time, until your sister counts it out loud in the street.

How it happens

Once I started paying attention, I could see exactly what I had been doing, and it is simpler than I expected.

A foot in the heat is not the same foot at nine in the morning and at three in the afternoon. It swells a little, and then it settles, and then it swells again. Everybody knows this. Nobody designs around it.

So the sandal you bought at nine in the morning is doing one of two things by lunchtime. Either the strap is biting, and you loosen it, or the strap is loose, and your foot is sliding about inside it and the strap has to grip harder to stop you. Tighten, slide, tighten.

And because the only thing holding you on is a strap across the top of your foot, that strap has to do all of it. All day. Over the one part of a foot with no padding on it at all.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I had upside down for about fifteen years.

I thought I needed a better strap. Softer, wider, more of them, a different buckle. I have bought sandals on exactly that reasoning and I have the box in the wardrobe to prove it.

It was never the strap. It is what the foot is standing on.

If the sole underneath is flat, your foot has nothing to settle into, so it slides forward and sideways with every step and the strap is the only thing stopping it. If the sole is contoured — a dip where the arch sits, a little wall at the heel, a ridge behind the toes — the foot sits in it and stays put. The strap is then only covering you. It is not holding you on.

That is the whole difference, and nobody had ever put it to me in one sentence. It took me until 62 and a sister who counts things.

What I actually bought

They are from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. Carol found them, which she brings up at every opportunity.

They are a flat sandal in a soft mustard yellow, with two wide straps that cross over the top of the foot in a V, an adjustable fastening at the side, and an open toe. And underneath, which is the part this whole letter is about, a moulded footbed with a proper contour to it rather than a flat slab.

The crossover does something the single wide strap never managed, too. Because the two straps meet in a V, the pressure spreads diagonally across the whole instep instead of sitting in one line, so there is no single edge pressing anywhere. Between the two, I have not touched the fastening once since the day they arrived.

The colour I was not expecting to like. I have bought tan and black sandals my whole adult life on the grounds that they go with everything, and it turns out a soft yellow goes with just as much and gets commented on instead of ignored.

That is really all there is to them. They are not complicated. The shape is underneath, where nobody thinks to look.

What happened at the markets

The first proper test was a Saturday morning at the markets, which is two hours of standing on concrete and is the fairest trial I could have given them.

Three women asked about them before we got to the coffee. The one at the flower stall had her own sandal half off under the table while she asked, which told me everything about why she was asking.

The third was Lorraine, who I have known twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I have worn. She looked down, looked up, and said they were cheerful. From Lorraine that is a standing ovation.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was what I did not do. I did not stop. Not once, in two hours on concrete, did I put a hand on something and loosen anything.

I only realised on the drive home, when Carol asked how my feet were and I had to think about it before answering. That is new.

Three things I have learned since

One. The strap is not the problem. I spent fifteen years shopping for a better strap and the answer was underneath my foot the whole time. If you have been doing the same, look at the sole before you look at anything else.

Two. A contour beats a cushion. Soft is not the same as shaped. A flat sandal with a thick squashy sole still lets your foot slide about on top of it. What you want is a dip for the arch and something at the heel to stop you travelling forward.

Three. The crossover spreads the load. Two straps meeting in a V put the pressure diagonally across the instep instead of in one line, so there is no single edge to dig in. I had assumed more straps meant more to irritate me. It is the opposite.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me look twice.

They are $69.95, down from $139.00. There is an Afterpay arrangement at four payments of $17.49 if that suits you better than one go.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid a good deal more than that for sandals I stopped wearing by January. There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no middleman taking a cut, and there is a sale on at the moment with free shipping Australia-wide.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and had a proper look before I ordered. They come in six colours — black, blue, yellow, orange, grey and beige — and the sizes run from an AU 4 up to an AU 12, with the European size printed beside each one. The listing says to take one size up if your feet are on the wider side, and I would take that seriously rather than guess.

There is a thirty day money-back guarantee, which is the only reason I was willing to order a sandal in a colour I had never owned.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat at this table with the teapot between us and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Go and stand in whatever sandals you own now and feel what is under your foot. If it is flat, that is your answer, and no amount of shopping for a kinder strap is going to fix it.

I am not going to tell you a sandal changes anything. It does not. But there is something in walking for two hours and not thinking about your feet once that I had quietly stopped expecting, and I would rather you did not stop expecting it either.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment with the free shipping. And look at the sole first. That is the only piece of advice in this whole letter.

Three times since we parked, she said. I had not noticed one of them.

Maggie