At 62, I have ruined every pair of shoes I own by treading the backs down
At 62, I have ruined every pair of shoes I own by treading the backs down
Six things the Elaiza gets right that ordinary shoes get wrong, from a woman who is in and out of the back door twenty times a day.
Caroline Richards · Customer · Nottinghamshire · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking, and let me start with the confession. I am Caroline, I am 62, I live in Nottinghamshire, and I have ruined every pair of shoes I own by treading the backs down. Not one pair has survived it. Go and look at yours now, if you like. I will wait.
The ones I have on in that photograph are called the Elaiza, from Nottingham Boutique, a small boutique that has been quietly making the ordinary things a bit lovelier for a few years now. They are clogs, which I had not worn since about 1978 and did not expect to again. When the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition that I could be completely honest in it.
How it happens
It is the in and out that does it, and I do not think it is carelessness. The bins. The washing line. The bird food. The post. The greenhouse. Back in for the kettle, out again because you have forgotten the secateurs. Twenty times a day, and there is not a woman alive sitting down to put proper shoes on for the bins.
So you do what everybody does. You shove your feet in with the backs squashed flat under your heels, you tell yourself it is only for a minute, and within a month the heel of every pair you own has gone soft and creased and it never, ever comes back up. Then you feel faintly guilty about it, which is the part that really annoys me, because we are being asked to feel guilty for doing the sensible thing.
What I had wrong
I had assumed the answer was discipline. Be better. Sit down. Use a shoehorn like a grown-up. I tried, and I lasted about four days, because the problem was never me. It was that I was asking one pair of shoes to do a job they were not built for, forty times a week.
The back of my shoe was not the problem. Having a back on it at all was the problem.
These do not have one. The back is open already, so there is nothing there to ruin, and the whole business stops being a small daily failure and becomes just how the shoe works.
The day they came. I had them on before the box was off the mat.
YOU CAN TREAD THEM DOWN ON PURPOSE
This is the whole thing and everything else is a bonus. There is no back to the shoe. No heel counter to crush, no stiffened bit to go soft, nothing that creases and stays creased. You step in and go, you come back and step out, and because that is exactly what the shoe is for, nothing about it wears out faster for being treated that way. I have had them a few weeks and they look precisely as they did in the box.
There is simply nothing there. That is the entire idea.
I have stopped wrecking my good shoes because these live by the door and get used instead.
Doreen K., NetherfieldTHE STRAP COMES UP WHEN YOU WANT THEM TO STAY ON
There is a narrow strap on a little buckle at each side, and it took me a day to realise I had bought two different shoes. Most of the time it hangs forward against the side, out of the way, and they are pure slip-ons. When I want them properly on — down to the bottom of the garden, up to the postbox, round to my neighbour's — I swing it back behind my heel and do it up, and then they are not going anywhere. One shoe, two settings, depending on what you are doing.
Strap back and buckled, for anything more than the bins.
Strap down round the house, strap up for the walk to the shop. I did not expect to use both, and I use both.
Janet P., SherwoodON AND OFF WITHOUT SITTING DOWN
I will say the quiet part out loud, because somebody should. Bending down to deal with shoes is not the pleasure at 62 that it was at 40, and if your back has views on the matter it is worse than that. These go on standing up, with a hand on the door frame and no more ceremony than that. I had not appreciated how much I had been putting off little trips outside simply because of the faff of getting shod for them.
No bending, no shoehorn, no sitting on the stairs. At my age that is worth the money on its own.
Iris B., CliftonTHE FOOTBED IS SHAPED, NOT FLAT
Inside, the footbed is a contrasting tan and it is moulded rather than flat — there is a raised area under the arch and a slight ridge up by the toes, so the foot sits in it rather than on it. I had half expected something you slide about on. You do not. I mention it because the last pair of slip-on things I owned were essentially a flat board with an upper stapled to it, and my feet knew about it by lunchtime.
The footbed. Shaped, with a bit of a hollow under the arch.
The inside is properly shaped. I can be in them all morning in the kitchen without my feet complaining.
Shirley A., MapperleyA PROPER SOLE, SO THE GARDEN PATH IS FINE
The sole is a good thick black rubber one with a tread cut into it and a lip that runs right round the edge, which is a long way from the thin flat bottom you get on an indoor shoe. It grips the path and the back step, and it has taken the wet grass and the gravel by the greenhouse without any drama. I would not go up a hill in them and I would still take care on a frosty morning, as I would in anything, but for pottering about outside they are entirely sensible.
A proper outdoor sole with a grip to it. Mine do the patio and the path every day.
Betty W., BilsthorpeTHEY DO NOT LOOK LIKE SLIPPERS, AND THAT IS THE POINT
This is the one that decided it for me. A leather-look upper, a real sole, a buckle — they look like shoes, because they are. So when the doorbell goes I do not have to do the shuffle of deciding whether I am respectable, and when I got to the garden centre in them nobody thought anything of it except to ask where they were from. Mine are the tan, which I like, and they do them in brown and black as well.
Where they live now. First thing on, last thing off.
They look like proper shoes, so I answer the door in them without a second thought.
Annette C., RainworthThe Elaiza, against the shoes by my back door before
There were three pairs on that mat and every one of them had a flattened heel. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
A back that creases the first time you tread it down
Sitting down, or a shoehorn, or a guilty shortcut
One setting, and it is the wrong one for the bins
A flat inside you slide about on
Slippers for indoors, shoes for out, two changes
No back at all, so there is nothing to ruin
On and off standing up, in about a second
Strap forward to slip on, strap back to stay on
A moulded footbed with a hollow under the arch
One pair that does the kitchen and the garden
About the price
The Elaiza is £28.95. It was £58.00.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that the autumn sale is on and the middle sizes go first. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have spent a great deal more than that on shoes I then quietly destroyed within a month, which is the comparison I would actually make.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women's words.
Out to put the bins round. Which is, after all, the entire point of them.
What I would tell you if we were friends
If you and I were sat in my kitchen and you asked me, this is what I would say. Go and look at the shoes by your back door. If the heel of every pair has gone soft and folded over, you have not been careless. You have been using shoes with backs on them for a job that does not want a back, twenty times a day, for years.
I spent a long time feeling mildly guilty about my own shoes. It turns out I simply had the wrong ones by the door.
Go and have a look while your size is still there, and put them where you actually come in and out.
Caroline
ELAIZA | Comfortable Slip-On Clogs
- Open back, so there is nothing to tread down
- Adjustable strap on a buckle, forward or behind the heel
- On and off standing up, no bending
- Moulded footbed with a shaped arch
- Thick rubber sole with a tread for grip outdoors
- Leather-look upper in tan, brown or black
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
The autumn sale is on now, half price. The middle sizes go first.