Oh My God, Shoes.

The post title references the video “Shoes” by Liam Kyle Sullivan, dubbed the first great viral music video on YouTube, in which an angsty teenage girl defies her parents to go on a shopping spree. Well a lot happens… but what sticks with me is that shoes are the target of her obsession, their varying forms an escape from the monotony of a cookie cutter lifestyle. I have always felt this draw to shoes myself. Footwear say a lot about a person’s personality, arguably more so than any other wearable item. They are specifically tailored to different uses- whether that be daily walking, hiking, dancing, or even fetishistic activities. As an extension of the foot that connects through nerves to every point in our body, choice of shoe is important for health as well as aesthetics.

There are numerous 3D printed shoe companies popping up. I figure: “How cool that I don’t have to spend a lifetime as a cobbler’s apprentice to make something functional and beautiful!” So for the past few months I have been on a mission to create unique shoes (and this is key)- that I will regularly wear out.

I sketched concepts with knitted uppers and 3D printed midsoles, the midsole being the real challenge of the design. Shoes are usually made from a laundry list of materials, and are rarely recyclable, contributing to massive amounts of landfill waste. The inventor in me wants to make a shoe with two materials (Yarn and TPU) that can be separated and recycled.

While I love sketching tall heels, I am keeping the heel height to a max 2 or 3 inches (not counting platform) for safety reasons.

Shoe sizing only makes sense in Japan, where your size directly corresponds to the length of your foot in cm. Other countries mantain preposterous systems invented by kings of old based on barleycorns or the like, and none of the systems align. Sizes even differ between brands, and types of shoe. But one thing remains the same, all the shoes are sculpted off of lasts- manufactured forms of the standardized human foot.

The pictures below outline my process of creating a digital last:

To make the last the right shape, I started by tracing my soles at a 90 degree angle while standing.

Orthographic charts for 3D modeling.

Since I want the upper of my shoes to be knitted I focused on the bottom half of the sculpts.

After a few hours of modeling over several days, I reached a point with the digital lasts where I was ready to start test printing.

In the beginning of this experiment I figured the shoes must perfectly conform to my feet, a feature that 3D printed shoe brands often tout they can provide after taking a photogrammetry scan of the individual customers foot. Ads for orthopedics and athletic shoes abound, claiming to solve every potential foot problem. Brands like Nike or Puma sponsor the most accomplished athletes on the planet so they must be the pinnacle of healthy shoe design, right??

Here are the first print tests of my 3D modeled midsoles:

These felt more and more like the exact shape of my foot, but nothing I would enjoy walking in. With too much arch support you feel disabled. Not enough arch support and… actually I knew not what kind of problems the lack of arch support cause, so I googled.

Seems like anyone claiming your feet cannot support themselves is selling foot support. Alternatively, copy on barefoot shoe selling sites warn the cushioning and snug arch conforming fits of athletic shoes are not beneficial, acting as pillowy crutches that allow our arch muscles to degrade, causing pronation. The tight toe boxes bind our toes into unnatural pointy shapes, which impact balance and make us reliant on specialty shoes. If you do not have severe foot problems already, you do not need orthopedics or tons of padding.

It is a downer to imagine we all have mildly deformed feet, but this perspective freed me from worry over creating a complex foot-shaped hyper-supportive midsole.

Enter Patty LaBell’s epic mukluk pattern.

I can not include pictures of these glorious mukluk due to copywrite reasons but they look something like this:

Depiction of “Funky Mukluks” crochet pattern on Etsy- from PattyLaBell store.

I love them! They are all I wanted the whole time! Flamboyant, colorful, and fluffy snow bunny boots with 70’s flair. A cloud to walk on that will conform to my feet in a natural way. I decided to save my Balenciaga sock meets Blender girl sneakers for a future date.

I used Patty’s pattern techniques to create some freehand crochet shoes using thick yarn:

Attempt 1 and 2 were unraveled.

Not quite there yet, but these fit well. What is that in the background you ask? It will be revealed in a future blog post!

In the end my first pair of shoes ended up being a pair of bizarre fluffy knitted slippers. Talk about an exercise in overthinking.

I think where the 3D printing will shine is in making them outdoor-ready.

Updates in a future blog post,

Thanks for reading!