When Fashion - or your Style? - Evolves for comfort

Manuela Boneto Rodrigues -

I wondered for a while what this new community first post should be about… so I thought maybe I'd start by talking a bit further about what should be expected from this blog.

As I have said in my bio, I am now 38, had a hectic yet happy life working with beautiful luxury shoe brands for the past 10 years, and with time… things changed. My shoe collection slowly became, as a result of my new lifestyle needs, quite obsolete. For years, I had thought that was just an option, meaning, choosing your daily shoe - and heel height - was simply a matter of style and being able to endure those heights, to walk well on heels.

Not only though personal style evolves over the years, but also does your self-respect and patience, or better put, your willingness to commit to daily feet suicide with 10cm high (or above) heels. Nonetheless, I started recently finding that women, regardless of age, look a bit funny (especially during the day) and not as elegant (nor natural) when wearing super arched high heels. Who am I to judge? Been there, done that. So based on my own experience and my shoe merchandising job more recent insights, I have anyway watched shoe trends actually changing substantially.


Self-Portrait Slingback Pumps

My new fresh interest for lower heels might be, in part, just the age hitting me... as I do think twice before wearing my high heels for more than 3 hours (hopefully half of the time seating down :))... but... with comfy trends going on now for years (sneakers, flatforms, not to mention some ugly fads that come and go) and so many brands now enlarging their offer in this before grey areas, it could really be the beginning of a new era:

a time to leave high-arched stilettos a bit aside... as technology and science evolve, beautiful-uncomfortable shoes might be doomed to be seen, eventually, just like one day corsets once were... not only painful, but also old-fashioned.

Don’t get me wrong... I have nothing against a beautiful and sexy flawless 10cm heel pump (and I’ll still wear them occasionally). We do have our days when we want to just feel and be seen that way. But really... most of the time, what are shoes anyway if not an expression of your morning mood, followed by a daily task mental scan and that simple yet obvious acknowledgement that it is still early... and the shoes you pick now will have to take you around and to places, all day, until night time?

And how much cooler do you feel when you still look sexy and pretty, but manage to walk faster and more comfortably, without looking at your feet at the end of the day as if they had been to war... and your mission is to then relieve and take care of those poor wounded soldiers?

So... this is all new to me and still on the works, but the idea here is that Till Nine should be a cool hunting & lifestyle website, instablog, and a community for women searching cool brands, styles, typologies, tips, travel ideas, and shoe industry insights of stylish WEARABLE* shoes. I look forward to hearing from you any requests, ideas, suggestions of what you would like to see here... hopefully together we can build something useful and exchange a lot of interesting ideas...!

*Shoes/heels to be worn from 9am ‘til 9pm, with an arch (pitch) no more inclined than 9cm...!

Read more about Till Nine here:
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About this post's featured shoes:

Self-Portrait's 'Kitty' slingback pumps, graphic striped leather and chains draped across the arch of the foot. The kitten heels have a mirrored rose gold finish.