Over the past several years, I have spent countless hours perfecting the insole construction of my shoes. The challenges to producing an insole that not only offers comfort but also elegance are extensive. With the successful creation of said insole came an overwhelming amount of gratification, but later on, I came to realize that this success still wasn’t enough. After the insole construction, the heel remains the second most problematic area of the high fashion shoe. With the insole mastered, I realized it was time to tackle a new project: the creation of our own heels. Like the rest of my shoes, they needed to provide stability while still maintaining an elegant and sophisticated look. After traveling around Italy and visiting every heel factory possible, my team and I decided to produce our own custom heel molds. While this is expensive, we refuse to compromise the quality of our shoes. The Joan Oloff team and I agreed this was the necessary next step in the development of my brand. Most footwear companies that market themselves as comfort, put a little padding under the sock liner and then they call it a day. True comfort is so much more than just an extra 8th of an inch of foam under the heel. While I am normally against the “smoke and mirrors” approach, for our heels we were willing to make a slight exception, but in a completely different way than most companies. Rather than tricking our customers into thinking the shoe would be comfortable when it really was not, we sought to trick the human eye. Our goal was to create the illusion of an elegant line, while creating a stable and supportive base. In order to achieve this “magic”, we designed our heels to have the shape of a pentagon. Here at Joan Oloff we call the new shape of our heel “the house” because when you look at the heel upside down, it looks similar to the silhouette of a house. From the back, however, it has the silhouette of a narrow heel. It has the best of both worlds: the functional stability of a comfortable shoe with the high fashion elegance a woman desires. The new and improved heels will be introduced in 50mm, 70mm, and 90mm heights, offering the different heights that every woman wants, while providing the function that every woman deserves! I am delighted to introduce this new hybrid mix of fashion and function for Fall 2016. xo Joan