by “I understand people want to dress up again, but high heels in the office? That is just ancient”.
This is Marcia Kilgore, the indomitable Canadian-born serial entrepreneur who launched the cult Bliss Spas and beauty products back in the 1990s, then Soap and Glory, then Beauty Pie and, 17 years ago, FitFlop.
The latter, if you haven’t already guessed, is a footwear company that specializes in comfort, although Kilgore is a talented salesperson who writes most of the copy for her products, not comfort, but engineering. And they test endlessly.
I don’t blame them for avoiding the word ca. Comfort is usually viewed with suspicion in the footwear industry – a synonym for frumpy. “It’s crazy,” says Kilgore, making progress in every sense. “You can put a worn-out fashion shoe on a shop floor and the damage it will do to all the people who buy it will be endless. But no one is going to stop you”.
It was one such fashionable shoe from a versatile French house that sparked her idea for FitFlop. “It was 1999 and the opening party for Bliss, so I bought a pair of amazing, crazy-expensive shoes that I had to take off after an hour because they were so painful”. She gave her speech barefoot.
More than 20 years later, Fit Flop is the unlikely route for Uma Thurman, Sam Mendes, Damon Albarn and Laura Bailey. Now, designer Roksanda – who has three of Fitflop’s current styles: the Shuv, a leather watch; the short Gen-FF sheepskin; and the iQushion, a Japanese-inspired leather fitflop, in its latest catwalk show during London Fashion Week – combining comfort with shameless fashion and sprinkling some of FitFlop’s trademark artistic, glamorous attitude in the process, infusing it with its stunning color combinations . .
This passion for flats is different because she is 5 ft 11. “I love heels sometimes,” says Roksanda. “But I usually save them for pantsuits. Flats, to me, are what you wear with a long evening dress. I like contrasts, but at the same time, I don’t believe in rules. Everyone should wear what feels good.”
Although they are at the top of their respective games, the two women are star-struck. Roksanda (thanks to her difficult-for-Western-Europeans-to-pronounce last name Ilinčić who goes professionally by her first name only) was immediately struck by Kilgore’s tour de force energy.
Roksanda says “that’s… well, Roksanda. I don’t even really think what she does as a way. It is timeless. It is lovely. It’s cool and so elegant yet it’s easy. But would I have ever picked up the phone for her if her creative director hadn’t known my creative director and set it up for us? No.”
For luxury London artisanal fashion labels like Roksanda, collaborations with bigger brands can be an attractive source of income, especially as they are still recovering from the pandemic. Stodgy megabrands are often eager to connect with far more interesting fashion creatives in the hope that osmosis will occur – sometimes to the detriment of both parties. Roksanda was excited about her professional connections. Barbour, Fila, Lululemon and now FitFlop have involved movement and technology that she would not normally have access to. “I love function and comfort and I like to elevate it. Even my most glamorous clients need to be practical some days.”
The technology she found at FitFlop was impressive, as you’d expect. It took Kilgore years to work out what kind of person she needed to make the first prototypes. “At first I thought I needed a shoe designer but although they can create beautiful footwear, they have no clue how it interacts between the body and the ground”. She visited universities around the UK, met biomechanics and scientists. “47,000 miles later, I found the right team at London South Bank University”. Even then, the first prototype looked like “a lump of coal foam with two ropes. I said ‘I don’t care if that’s a whole yoga class for my body. It’s terrible’.”
Seventeen years later, the British-based brand, which has its own in-house team of biomechanics and now includes a children’s range, sells in 73 countries and last year received £30 million in funding to launch turbocharge in the US, it is not. traditional beauty. No heels or smooth toes. If you don’t like an apartment, there’s nothing to see here.
But if you do, you have a foot massage the whole time you’re wearing them. Without getting too technical, this is largely thanks to a patented microboard embedded in the thickest cushioned soles that works with body alignment. Over the years, FitFlops has added slimmer soles with different technologies. They’re all comfortable, although even FitFlop requires a wear-in for a thong between the toes.
The key to happy feet, according to Kilgore, is “getting as much of the foot in contact with the ground as possible – even if it’s not hard paving slabs. That’s where a good shoe comes in. Our wobble boards recreate the feeling of walking across soft ground.” Contact with the ground stimulates the nervous system. “There is a corresponding point for every organ in the body,” says Kilgore (this is the central principle of reflexology). “If you stimulate those points on the body, you stimulate every system of your body”.
I tell her that I’m surprised that the Shuv is backless, as I thought anatomically, the ideal is maximum support up to the ankle. “That is a misunderstanding. The most important thing is that the leg should be able to do full flex. It’s really not a good thing to have your heels covered in something that isn’t right for you. So a well-designed backless shoe that allows the heel to land naturally where it wants to is best. If I’m in my office, I’ll wear the backless ones in the winter.”
While the rise of the “ugly” fashion shoe cleared a path for FitFlop to tap into more style-conscious feet, no one has been able to copy FitFlop’s technology until now. That’s a good thing, of course, “but I’m honestly surprised that with all this focus on wellness, we still ignore the health of our feet,” says Kilgore. She thinks she needs to change. “All we have to do is see how good we feel when our feet are taken care of. It’s still our instinct. After all, we were barefoot a lot longer than we were in shoes”.
