Mass produced, inexpensive shoes use just basic materials and foot molds. Better shoes take more consideration into the sole design and fit.
One of the worst designs in the universe came from the design of cowboy boots - which were designed for horse stirrups and walking around piles of manure. The pointy toe. That design wrecked more peoples feet in the past 100 years than anything else.
I used to see a lot people born in the early 1900s walking around on beaches with hammer toes, huge bunions, massive, distorted big toe joints and toes all crunched together because of shoe design.
Hush Puppies started the move to more comfortable shoes with soft leather sides and composite soles. The move towards ‘sneakers’ saved millions of feet. I used to wear Dingo square toed boots when everyone else was wearing pointy toed ones, having noticed the deformities as a teen. Still, I used to get corns. I switched to sneakers and one day realized that I had not had corns in ages, all the ones I’d developed were gone along with those annoying heavy callous build ups people used to get on the pad under the big toe.
As time went on, and younger people showed up more inclined to wear better shoes and sneakers, I noticed a sharp decrease in the ‘nasty looking’ feet on the beaches. (No, I do not have a foot fetish. Just observant.)
I used to cringe when I’d spot these woman on TV wearing those hideously pointy toed leather shoes in fashion from Paris and in the Western States, the style is still the old cowboy boot.
Once, when buying Dingo Boots (square toed) years ago, I complained to the pretty little sales girl that they were too tight. She pertly informed me that boots were supposed to be tight, that her husband always walked around swearing and complaining as his new ones broke in. I told her I did not want mashed toes and bought a bigger size.
I never have figured that philosophy out, because not only did it mash your toes up, but eventually those good looking boots stretched out and got all crappy looking.
A girl friend of mine used to wear leather open toed clogs and loved them. There was/is a style of shoe out with wide, oblique square toes that young people wore in the 70s that looked funny at first and then cool.
Podiatrists are probably ticked off because now days, they have less corn, callous and twisted toe work to do.
Medical shoes are really great because of the sole, designed to distribute pressure and the ‘top,’ designed not to squeeze your foot. Custom fit shoes are even better, taken from a mold of your foot, but often ugly as heck. Still, people I know who wear them say they have never had anything better, even though the cost is quite high.
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