Many of us love high heels. They make us taller and the shoes themselves can simply be too beautiful to leave behind. It is, however, a known fact that heels are not the most comfortable of items to wear. I am glad to report that there is some good news for all high heel lovers out there. Dolly Singh, former SpaceX employee, may have found the answer to our painful problem – and managed to keep the beautiful design we girls all love.
Dolly is looking to use science to reinvent the traditional steel strut running through the shoe, known as the “shank”. Together with her team, she has swapped metal for modern polymers to distribute the weight of the foot more evenly. This then allows the shoe to work with the natural mechanics of the body.
The idea is interesting and Dolly Singh has recruited an even more interesting team to make the idea happen. Altogether, the Thesis Couture team are an impressive group that include an astronaut, a rocket scientist, an orthopaedic surgeon, and a fashion scientist. Dolly has enlisted the help of a former NASA astronaut to help rethink the ground-level aerodynamics. The aim is to increase the lift force on the shoe and decrease the drag to make walking in the shoes more comfortable. The orthopaedist, meanwhile, is helping to smooth out the workings of the shoe itself and make it more comfortable with a cushioned heel and a “toe bed”. This limits the ability of the shoe to slip. What they are aiming for, in short, is to give the shoe a smoother ride whilst maintaining the style of the high heel.
I simply love the idea and look forward to a time when something like this is more widely available – and affordable. For the moment, however, Thesis Couture have taken inspiration from many inspirational women in our history. Many of them are from within the STEM field. In the Look Book, you will find shoe designs based on figures like Amelia Earhart, Joan Clark, Margaret Hamilton, and Marie Curie. What the team are doing is in a way just as inspirational. They are taking a design that has stagnated for more than a century and are changing it using science to meet the modern world.
-Claire Amundson
Junior Girl
Girl Museum Inc.