Shoe Fetish, or How A Grad Application Got Me to Plug A Shoe On This Blog

A dear friend is applying to a marketing graduate program, and as part of the application she is interviewing several people on their shoes. What are we wearing? What attracted us to the shoes? How do they make us feel?

I wrote a small essay on my current love, the Earth shoe. (Many thanks to Lara and Alyssa who have again inspired me to follow in their, ehem, shoe buying footsteps.) I ended up doing a little research myself, and uncovered amazing little tidbits about this brand.

• The creator, Anne Kalso, was a Danish yoga instructor who had spent time in Brazil admiring the posture of the natives. When she realized that their footprints in the sand showed their heels sinking significantly deeper than their toes, Kalso designed a shoe with a negative, or "minus,' heel that would keep the toes up and the bodyleaning slightly back, the belly pulled in, and the spine straightened into proper alignment.
  
• Apparently they were THE shoe of the 70s! The shoes got to the United States by way of a New York couple, Eleanor and Raymond Jacobs, who discovered them in creator Anne Kalso's store in Denmark and then opened their own in lower Manhattan on April 1, 1 970. That date also happened to be the first Earth Day celebrated in the United States, and to attract the crowds of eco-minded hippies cavorting in the streets, Eleanor Jacobs stuck a hand-painted sign in the window that advertised "Earth shoes." A name, and a fad, were born.
  
• After a some 20-year hiatus from the market, French-born U.S. shoemaker Michel Maynard bought the rights and resurrected the shoe in 2001.
  
• The company markets that their shoe "effectively makes you walk at a 3.7% incline on flat ground. [They] say the unique design provides a more strenuous workout that burns more calories.
  
• I thought of my dear pregnant friend Jenna, when I read this article: "Now that you are carrying such precious (and heavy) cargo, your shoes not only need to be cute - they have to be comfy, too. We tested all six pairs of slip-ons and made sure there's no need to bend down-and once she arrives, no need to put the baby down-to get dressed. Just step into them and be on your way."

I bought my first pair the other week and have been loathe to ever take them off again. So I thought I would spread the word.