Women often complain about the discomfort of high-heeled shoes. Additionally, heeled shoes are not an option if one is recovering from an ankle or other lower-extremity injury. To remediate this, many women will opt to wear sneakers or flats as they walk to work or other destinations. Usually, this looks unattractive with a suit or nice business clothing. Another drawback of wearing comfortable shoes instead of heeled-shoes is that the pair of shoes with heels needs to be carried in a separate bag (no one wants to carry more while commuting than they have to).
As a solution, I propose removable heel shoes. An attractive shoe could be developed where the heel can snap or screw into the bottom. When walking is necessary, the heels of the shoes can be removed and thrown into a purse. A woman then has instant, comfortable flats. Subsequently, when one reaches the target destination, the heels can be screwed or snapped back into place (it must be stable) and one can look appropriate with business attire. This solves the comfort issue and carrying issue as the heels of a shoe can easily fit into a purse rather than carrying a separate bag.
I agree
No opinion
I disagree
Add your comment
Sounds promising. Though I don't have too much experience wearing high-heeled shows, regular shoes hurt my feet, so I can't imagine how painful high-heeled shoes must be.
As idea pretty good - I've been thinking about it for years - but I'm afraid that it's also pretty impossbile to engineer such shoes (I don't know how much you know about manufacturing or designing high heel shoes, I only have experience with the way designers work at Valentino - and so far it doesn't seem that there is a sole that can give you the support and stability needed that a high heel needs and that is yet flexible enough to change form into a low- or no-heel shoe).
I think you hit on a big problem that many women face. My fiancee, who I know isn't alone, is always talking about how sore her feet are walking home from work. There's an interesting article I had read (below) that discusses an invention along the lines you are suggesting, but with a foldaway high heel.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/09/02/ella.kilgour/
There is certainly a need for convertible shoes. However, I'm not sure how practical this would be. For example, there would have to be rubber or some scuffable surface added to the bottom of the shoe once the heel is removed. There is no rational reason behind wearing heels anyway, other than they are attractive. Therefore, adding a screw-post and a chunk of rubber to the back of something intended for style could be challenging.
This sounds like a really good idea, but it would seem to fight an uphill battle against those who see this as unfashionable. There is definitely a need for a product like this, but I'm not so sure that many women would be willing to sacrifice the allure of high fashion. Might be like the pants that zip-off to become shorts.
I think this is a great idea and would be a very popular product if it could be done fashionably. I was sorry to hear yep's comment but I hope that there is some way this could be done that hasn't been thought of yet. Perhaps it wouldn't work for a really high heel but maybe for a lower heal that is still business appropriate it would work.
My wife would love this. She almost always carries two pairs of shoes while going to/from work. I imagine it will be difficult to combine comfort with style, however.
I think it is an excellent idea. There is a huge market for it.
Brilliant! I've often wished I could remove the heels on my shoes or add them on as need be.
I would love it if my wife could do this so we could walk to dinner and she could wear "going out" shoes.
I think the concept is good. Since this has to be aesthetically pleasing, I was thinking of a swivel heel (one that would become part of the sole of the shoe) instead of a heel that would completely detach.
A snap off exchangeable heel for women's shoes was actually invented and shown on Australia's ABC "New Inventors" show back in 2003 or 4. The clever part of the invention was the twist and snap in lock system.
Just a hinge, and you can walk with the stem in either position. However, this is a practical solution for an impractical practice (high heels) so I'm not sure if it will make "sense" to the high-heeled consumer.
Good idea, but aren't high-heeled shoes usually somewhat arched? How would you compensate for this and make them both flat and heeled?
Here is my idea.
Instead of a snap off heel, what you do is create a mold that will take the base of the shoe, heel and all in the flat position and then a rubber sole to the whole device which is flat.
The heel will enter the base unit at about a 30 to 40 degree angle.
You will end up being 2 inches off the ground, but since most people shrink an inch at work anyway the net result is 1 inch taller:)
How about actually making it like the radio anthena of high end cars. You push a button and it comes out. You can even adjust the height by stopping it before it totally comes out.
This idea is near ready to hit the stores ;)