At 56, I Found Out Flat Sandals Are Flat. My Foot Is Not.

A note from a reader about the sandals from a small Australian boutique that shaped the footbed to the foot, and ended the business of coming home and sitting down straight away.

I had always put it down to the walking. You do a morning at the markets, you come home, you sit down and you do not get up again for a while, and you tell yourself that is just what a long day does.

It was not the walking. It was that I was doing all of it standing on a completely flat piece of rubber.

Put your bare foot on the floor and look at it from the side. There is an arch in the middle and a cup under the heel. It is a shape. Now look at the inside of almost any flat sandal you own. It is a straight line. So your foot spends the whole day spread out flat with nothing underneath the part of it that is supposed to be held, and by two in the afternoon it lets you know.

Three weeks ago my sister came back from the shops with a pair from Perth Boutique and told me to pick them up and look at the inside before I said anything.

What they are

The pair I ordered is a soft mustard suede. Open toe, a wide crossover strap over the instep with a little stretch panel set into it, and nothing else. No buckle, no pin, no row of holes where none of them is ever quite the right one.

But the footbed is the whole point.

It is moulded, not flat. There is a raised ridge running under the arch, a dished cup that the heel sits down into, and a slight lip at the toe. The foot is held in that shape rather than lying out flat on top of it, which means the work is spread across the whole of your foot instead of landing on the heel and the ball.

Under that there is a layer of real cushioning, and under that a flat sole with grip. The whole thing weighs almost nothing.

The straps are the second surprise. Because there is a stretch panel in them they give where your foot is widest and hold where it is not, so there is no strip cutting a line across the top of your foot, and no buckle to sit down and fiddle with.

The mustard pair. The shape you can see in the footbed is the entire reason they work.

I had spent years buying sandals on how they looked from above. The part that decides your afternoon is the part you never look at.

What happened at the markets

I tested them properly on a Saturday at the markets. Concrete the whole way, two hours of it, then the walk back to the car, then I stayed on my feet in the kitchen afterwards to put it all away.

That last bit is the part I noticed. Normally the putting away is the moment I give in and sit down. I did the whole lot standing up and only realised afterwards that I had.

My sister asked me about them the next morning, which is a question that usually means she wants hers back.

“You did not sit down once,” she said. “I was watching.”

→ See the sandal collection

What changed in three weeks

I was not expecting a revelation from a flat sandal. I was expecting to get through a day without thinking about my feet, which is a low bar and one that almost nothing clears. Three things I noticed, and I wrote them down because I knew I would want to remember.

1. The arch is doing the work. It is a small ridge and it feels strange for about a day, the way a new pillow does. Then you stop noticing it and start noticing that the ache you had stopped arriving. That is the trade and it is worth it.

2. The stretch strap beats a buckle. Feet swell in the heat, particularly on a long day or a flight. A buckle is set to one size and then it is wrong for the rest of the day. A strap with give in it adjusts itself, every hour, without being asked.

3. They slip straight on. No bending down, no sitting on the end of the bed, no fastening anything. You step in and you are out the door, which sounds like a small thing and is the reason they are the pair by the door now.

There are twenty styles in the collection and they are all built on the same shaped footbed. Slides, slingbacks, a few woven and braided ones, and some on a low cushioned wedge if you would rather a bit of height.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because sixty-four ninety-nine is not what I expected to pay for a sandal built like this. So I sat down and wrote out what the last few years of getting this wrong has actually cost.

• The flat sandals I walked the markets in and regretted, $90
• The pair that rubbed a blister across the top of my foot on day one, $75
• Insoles I tried to wedge into a sandal, which looked exactly as bad as it sounds, $60
• A pair from this collection, $64.99

And underneath, in slightly larger letters, the only thing I could think to write. …and I blamed my feet??

They are a small boutique selling directly, which is most of the answer, and the rest is that it is on sale. Most of the collection is $64.99 instead of $218.00, and the discount stacks if you take more than one pair.

What I’d tell you if we were friends

If you were in my kitchen with a cup of tea and you asked me whether you should order a pair, this is what I would say.

I would tell you to stop buying sandals from the photograph of the top of them. Find the picture of the inside. If the footbed is a flat board, it does not matter how nice the straps are, because your foot will be doing all the work on its own again.

I would tell you to give the arch three days before you decide. It is noticeable at first and then it is not, and the ache not turning up at two o’clock is what you are actually buying.

I would tell you to order two. Not because I want you spending money, but because the discount stacks — two is ten per cent off, three is fifteen, four is twenty — and because I bought the mustard to try and immediately wished I had the black as well.

And I would tell you that delivery is free anywhere in Australia and there are thirty days to send them back, so it costs you nothing but a few days of wearing them round your own house, which is the only test that has ever told me the truth anyway.

If you have been coming home and sitting straight down and calling that normal, it is worth finding out whether it was ever your feet at all.

Mine were fine. They were just standing on the wrong thing.

— Maggie