At 58, I Worked Out The Problem With Heels Was Never The Height. It Was The Sole.

A note from a reader about the leather shoes from a small Australian boutique that put a proper tread under a proper shoe, and quietly ended the flats-in-the-handbag routine.

I worked it out standing in a car park in the rain, holding onto the door of my own car, taking very small steps across the wet line markings like someone on ice.

It was not the heel. The heel was barely five centimetres. It was the sole. Smooth, thin, hard leather, with about as much grip as a dinner plate, and underneath it you can feel every single thing you walk on.

That is the part nobody tells you. You can buy a low heel, a block heel, a sensible heel, and it will still be sitting on a sole that was designed to look good in a photograph of a shoe. So you do what we all do. You keep a pair of flats in the handbag, you change in the car, and you accept that a nice pair of shoes is something you wear to a venue rather than something you walk anywhere in.

Three weeks ago I stopped doing that, and it was not because I found a more comfortable heel. It was because I found a better sole.

What they are

The pair I ordered is a black leather Mary Jane. Round toe, a line of brogue perforation across the toe cap and down the sides, and a narrow ankle strap with a small buckle. Properly classic. The sort of shoe that has looked right for about eighty years and will keep looking right.

Then you turn it over.

Underneath there is a chunky lugged rubber sole with real tread cut into it. Not a smooth leather sole with a thin rubber patch glued to the ball. Actual grip, with depth to it, the kind you would expect on a boot.

The heel is a stacked block, modest and wide, set square under the back of the foot rather than tucked in under the arch. Combined with the ankle strap, which holds your foot onto the shoe instead of letting it slide forward, the whole thing is stable in a way a court shoe simply is not.

So the top half is elegant and the bottom half is sensible, and because nobody looks at the bottom half, you get away with it entirely.

The black pair. Classic on top, serious underneath.

A chunky sole is not a compromise on an elegant shoe. It is the thing that lets you actually wear the elegant shoe.

What happened in town

The real test was a Saturday in town. Street parking, a long walk up to the shops, two hours on hard floors, lunch, then back down a hill that is genuinely steep and was genuinely wet.

For years that day would have been a flat-shoe day. No question. I went in these, and I did not once put my hand out for a railing or take the short careful steps you take when you do not trust what is under you.

My friend noticed before I said anything. She looked down at them and said they were lovely, and then said, hang on, have you been in those all morning?

“Where were these when I was ruining my feet for twenty years,” she said, and then she ordered a pair at the table.

→ See the shoe collection

What changed in three weeks

I was not after a new look. I wanted to stop having two sets of shoes for every outing, the ones I left the house in and the ones I actually walked in. Three things I noticed, and I wrote them down because I knew I would want to remember.

1. The tread is the whole thing. Wet footpaths, polished floors in a shopping centre, the painted bit of a car park, a lawn at a garden party. The places that used to make me walk carefully are just places I walk now. That is not a small change to your day.

2. The strap stops the sliding. In a slip-on shoe your foot creeps forward all day and your toes do the work of holding it on. A buckled strap keeps your foot where it should be, which is why these still feel fine at four in the afternoon.

3. It is real leather, so it gives. It softened to the shape of my foot in about three wears rather than fighting me for a month, and it looks better now than it did in the box, which is the opposite of what usually happens.

There are twenty-one styles in the collection and they are all built the same way — leather uppers, soles with something to them. Mary Janes, lace-up derbies, ballet flats, a few with a low block heel, and some proper lace-up brogues.

Now, about the price

I want to talk about the price, because leather shoes with a sole like this are not supposed to cost what these cost. So I sat down and wrote out what I have actually spent on the problem.

• The court shoes I wore to two weddings and then gave away, $150
• The “comfortable” heel that was not comfortable, $130
• The flats I kept in the handbag to change into, $60
• Heel grips, gel pads and stick-on grippy soles, over the years, $40
• A pair from this collection, $76.99

And underneath, in slightly larger letters, the only thing I could think to write. …and I still changed in the car??

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 around $76.99 instead of $150.00, which is roughly half, and the discount stacks if you take more than one pair.

What I’d tell you if we were friends

If you were sitting 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 shopping by heel height. It is the wrong measurement and it is the reason you have a cupboard full of low heels you still do not wear. Turn the shoe over and look at what is actually going to be between you and the footpath. That is the thing that decides whether you walk in them or carry them.

I would tell you to start with the black Mary Jane, because it goes with everything from cropped jeans to a dress and it is the pair I have worn most, by a long way.

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 one pair as an experiment and have since gone back for the lace-ups.

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 the trouble of walking up and down your own hallway in them, which is the only fitting that has ever told me the truth anyway.

If you have been keeping a second pair of shoes in your handbag for longer than you would like to admit, please do go and look.

You are allowed to walk in your nice shoes. It was always the sole that was stopping you.

— Maggie