Why one pair of comfort shoes earned a letter

I have bought comfortable shoes for twenty years. These are the first I am writing a letter about.

Six things these shoes get right that twenty years of comfort shoes got wrong, written down by a customer, not a shoemaker.

Maggie Whitfield · Customer · Cheshire · 5 min read

I am 67, and I have been buying so-called comfortable shoes for twenty years. I could open a small unhappy museum with the results. The grey sponges. The flat pumps that felt like standing on lino. The sturdy pairs that weighed a pound each and still rubbed. So when a woman my age walked the entire long loop at a National Trust garden, gravel, arboretum, wet grass and all, while our coach group wilted into the tea room, I paid attention to her feet.

Brown trainers, smart ones, with a little zip on the side. They are called the Rosavelle, from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I ordered a pair fully expecting to send them back, and instead I wrote the boutique a letter about them. They asked if they could put it up for other women to read. So here it is, the six things these get right.

Comfort shoes, if you have shopped for them lately, come in two piles. The first pile takes your comfort seriously and your appearance as a lost cause, grey, spongy, shaped like a bread roll. The second pile looks respectable and goes flat as cardboard by two in the afternoon.

Comfortable or presentable, never both, and at our age everybody quietly picks the bread roll.

I stopped accepting that a woman has to choose, and these shoes are the proof I was right to.

1

The sole is the whole story

Look at it from the side. That thick white layer under the foot is not for show, it is a deep bed of cushioning that softens every single step, so the pavement stops arriving quite so hard. I tested it the unglamorous way, three hours on cobbles in Chester, and got off the coach afterwards like a woman half my age. It is the difference between shoes that carry you and shoes you carry.

The sole from the side. That white layer is the whole argument.

★★★★★

“I did four hours of Christmas shopping in these on the first day. I have never done that in any shoe.”

Eileen R., Buxton

2

A wide, steady base with a proper tread

The sole is broad where your foot is broad, so you stand planted rather than perched, and the black tread underneath is cut deep, the sort that holds on wet leaves and shiny supermarket floors. October pavements are an ice rink with foliage. These hold on.

On, mid-step, on exactly the sort of path that usually worries me.

★★★★★

“Steady as anything on the wet path to my allotment. I do not think about my footing in them at all.”

Christine H., Skipton

3

The zip nobody advertises

White laces at the front, and a proper zip hidden at the side. You tie the laces once, to exactly the snugness you like, and from then on the shoes go on and off with the zip, stood up, in a second, at the door or at the surgery. Whoever added it has knelt on a hallway floor wrestling a trainer and decided never again.

The side zip. Set the laces once and never tie them again.

★★★★★

“The zip is why I bought them and the cushioning is why I love them. On and off without sitting down.”

Barbara M., Shrewsbury

4

Room where your toes actually are

The toe is rounded and roomy, cut for the shape feet actually take after sixty years of use, not the shape they have in a catalogue. Nothing is pressed, nothing is squeezed, and by evening, when every other shoe I own has begun its complaints, these have nothing to say.

The morning they arrived.

★★★★★

“First shoes in years that do not pinch across the front by teatime. Roomy without looking clumpy.”

Dorothy A., Ripon

5

Padded where shoes usually bite

The collar around the ankle is softly padded and lined, so there is no rubbing at the heel, no hard edge at the ankle bone, no breaking-in period to survive. I wore them out of the box for a full day, which I would not dare with any other new shoe I have owned.

By the back door, where the daily pair lives.

★★★★★

“No blisters from day one, and I have difficult heels. That has never happened to me before.”

Sheila T., Matlock

6

They look like shoes you chose

This is the part twenty years of comfort shoes got most wrong. The two-tone brown with the white stitching looks like a smart pair of trainers a granddaughter would nod at, not equipment. They go with trousers, jeans and my navy coat, and nobody at church has once looked at my feet with sympathy. Brown or black, UK 3 to 8.5.

Both of them on the bed. The brown goes with everything I own.

★★★★★

“Finally comfort shoes I do not have to apologise for. I get compliments, which still surprises me.”

Ann G., Ludlow

The Rosavelle, against the comfort shoes you have been buying

About the price

I will be straightforward about the price, because it was the thing that made me suspicious. The Rosavelle is £35.95, and it was £72.00. Shoes with this much engineering underneath them usually start at twice that in the comfort shops, and I have paid it, for pairs that are now in the museum.

The boutique says selling directly with no middleman is how the price stays down, and that this is the launch price on their first autumn stock. That is their arithmetic, not mine. What I can tell you is that I have worn them every day for three weeks, my grey sponges have not been out of the cupboard once, and I have already bought the black.

Maggie

ROSAVELLE | Orthopaedic Comfort Shoes

★★★★☆ 4.2 out of 5 from 300+ reviews

£72.00 £35.95

• ✓Deep cushioned sole that softens every step
• ✓Wide steady base with a gripping tread
• ✓Side zip, on and off without retying
• ✓Roomy rounded toe, padded collar
• ✓Brown and Black, UK 3 to 8.5
• ✓Free UK delivery and 30 day returns

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