High Heel Shoe blog

Happy New Year!! We hope everyone is having a safe and happy holiday season! 2010 is just hours away!

A study was recently done to find out how memorable a woman’s first kiss was in comparison to remembering the first pair of shoes purchased with their own money. The results were over 92% of women could remember the first pair of shoes, with more than one in three women polled could not recall their first kiss.

In a different survey, over 1,000 women were questioned about their relationship with footwear in contrast to their romantic history, which was posted on a shoe accessory website, and the results were really surprising. While 96% of these ladies regretted throwing away a pair of shoes, only 15% of them felt badly about dumping a boyfriend. These results may be a bit biased based on ‘who’ performed the questionnaire, so readers comments are welcomed.

Below are a few ‘reported’ facts about women and their footwear:

* The average woman has 19 pairs of shoes.
* Four of these pairs are worn regularly, one-fourth of them have only been worn once.
* One in six women owns over 30 pairs.
* Women purchase four new pairs every year.
* One in seven have hidden a new pair of shoes from their partner.
* Six in ten women regret at least one shoe purchase.

Where do you fall? Are you average, above or below average? What is the most you have ever spent on a pair of high heels?

It is said that sagging or drooping of breasts is a natural, inevitable process that happens to all women at some point in their life, except those with fairly small breasts. It is also believed that pregnancy and losing weight are additional reasons. Thousands of women every year undergo plastic surgery to have breast lifts done, but surgery results are not permanent since the skin and ligaments will stretch again eventually.

Constant or prolonged sitting, which most of us do, causes the muscles on the fronts of the hips to become short and tight. Also the glutes — or butt muscles — actually forget how to contract. The combination of tight muscles on the front of the hips and weak muscles on the backside causes the pelvis to tilt forward. This pushes the lower abdomen outward, making the belly pooch out. Another belly pooch culprit: high heels. “High-fashion shoes not only contribute to your pooch, but again, leave you less perky up top as well”, according to Rachel Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., fitness advisor for Women’s Health. “wearing high heels can result in saggy breasts. Heels make your ankle muscles tight. This leads to tighter muscles all the way up your legs to your lower back. And a tight lower back causes you to compensate by hunching forward even more, so your sag worsens”.

So should you throw out your heels? Many women ‘have’ to wear them for work and therefore cannot get away from them. But there are a few things you can do to help. Always sit as tall as you can, exercise daily, eat healthy and stretch your chest. You can also try to minimize the amount of time wearing heels. Wear a pair of flats to work, change out into heels at work, and change back into flats for the commute home. Women also just wear them to try and look more appealing, but in the long run can they be doing more harm than good?

Happy Father’s Day!!

First we would like to post an update to a post we made back in November titled Lower Shoe Prices for Who. Earlier this year the Affordable Footwear Act was hoped to become part of the economic stimulus package that went before Congress. Unfortunately it was not included. The AAFA intends to continue to push approval of this act by Congress. Because this bill (H.R. 3934) was introduced in a previous session of Congress, no more action can occur on it. Sessions of Congress last two years, and at the end of each session all proposed bills and resolutions that haven’t passed are cleared from the books. This bill has been reintroduced as S. 730: Affordable Footwear Act of 2009. The latest action was on March 26, 2009 in which it was read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance.The majority of bills and resolutions never make it out of committee, according to govtrack.us.

We have also come upon another interesting bit of news. Back in early February 2009, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced that the VAT export rebate for apparel and textiles was being increased from 14% to 15%. It is unknown if this affects the footwear industry, but one would think that it should. The export tax rebate refers to the money the tax authority returns to exporting enterprises for the indirect tax they pay in the production and distribution process. Even if it does not affect footwear, one would think it should affect the price of apparel that is being imported from China. Since the manufacturers are seeing some sort of break in the costs they are incurring to export their goods, couldn’t they possibly pass along a discount to the importers who are purchasing their merchandise? If they could pass along a discount, the retailers should be able to offer some sort of lower price along to the consumers. Rather than seeing any decrease in cost of the merchandise we offer, unfortunately we have seen an increase. We have not passed any of these increase in costs along to our customers at this time, and hope that we do not
have to.

This is a series of articles that we put together to help people decide what type of shoe to wear with what outfit. In todays world women have so many different options when it comes to high heels. Should it be a pump or sandal, a mule or ankle strap? Picking the right heel for the right outfit is just as important as picking the outfit itself.