The Detachable Heel
Design
A smart idea on paper that somehow never went mainstream — and the open questions about why.
For the longest time, women entrepreneurs have surfaced the same well-known pain: we don't have shoes that travel well to the fancy restaurant and then become the fancy shoes we need once we're there. The proposed solution was the snap-on, snap-off heel. Either you carry the detachable heel with you, or the heel folds flat into the sole and pops back out when you need the height.
It's a smart idea on paper. Carrying multiple pairs of shoes in your bag is annoying. Suffering through painful feet all night is worse. And yet, somehow, the detachable and foldable heel just never caught on. No one really knows why, even though the business idea has been done and re-done over the last twenty years and still never gone mainstream.
Sometimes things just don't take off, even when they seem like great ideas, even when they solve a pain felt by fifty percent of the global population. As far as I'm aware, the current workaround is still dancing barefoot in the club, carrying your shoes home in your hands, or, if you're more sensible, those foldable ballet-flat slippers you can stuff into a handbag.
If anyone actually knows why the detachable heel never worked, please put me out of my misery and let me know. Is it because the shoes were too ugly? Is it because we would rather have two pairs of shoes we really like than one more practical, less attractive solution? Would it work if they looked like Louboutins? In fact, why haven't the detachable heel shoes been created by a designer brand? So many questions to be answered on this.