Nearly 25 years after Spanx shapewear took hold of women’s silhouettes, its founder has unveiled another first: the stiletto-heeled sneaker.
Sneex, a hybrid stiletto touted on the company’s website as a “hy-heel,” is the latest invention by entreprenuer Sara Blakely, the woman behind the billion-dollar brand, Spanx, the undergarments worn by the likes of Oprah and Gwyneth Paltrow that took the fashion world by storm in 2000.
With her latest invention, Blakely has set out to create a luxury high-heeled shoe that’s as comfortable as a pair of sneakers, resulting in a bold design that appears to be a literal interpretation of the concept.
Made in Spain, the shoes feature materials such as Napa leather and Italian mesh, and are available in a variety of styles intended for casual and formal wear.
“It was a long development — a lot of factory development, like 9-10 years,” Blakely recently told CBS Morning News, describing a start-and-stop search for a manufacturer that took her to factories throughout Europe amid countless rejections.
“A lot of factories weren’t set up to kind of do the performance of a sneaker with the stiletto, so it was a lot of trial and error,” she said. “At one point in development, I go, ‘I just want my high heel to feel like my sneaker,’ and then I just went, ‘OK guys, let’s just try it and see if it works.’”
In creating Sneex, Blakely said she tackled three main pain points that women have with their heels. “The first is, we didn’t want the toe to squeeze your toes. The second was there’s always been a gap between your foot and the shoe — in a heel — in the middle where the arch is. We filled in the gaps so your whole foot is supported,” she said.
The third pain point is balance. “Traditional high heels, for hundreds of years, 80% of our weight is on the ball of our foot and 20% is on the heel,” the inventor said, adding that with Sneex, the weight distribution on the wearer’s foot is more of a 50/50 distribution.
“So even though you’re in a 3-inch stiletto, you almost feel like you’re flat on the ground. It’s like a really weird feeling and they’re really, really comfortable for that reason,” said Blakely.
The only thing higher than the 3-inch heel on Sneex is their price point. A pair of the quirky luxury heels will cost you between $395 and $595. That may be a pain point in itself for many consumers, especially as Americans cut back on spending amid high prices on day-to-day items such as food, gas and shelter.
For those who do have the money to spend, however, Blakely said Sneex are “worth every penny.”
Anne Marie D. Lee is an editor for CBS MoneyWatch. She writes about topics including personal finance, the workplace, travel and social media.
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