bunthius 18I wonder if there are such a thing as minimal dress shoes? I am now taking up to 3 tango classes a week and my dress shoes are the only shoes I own with a heel raise. My feet are starting to cramp because of this. I need the hard, slick sole for easy sliding. Also if there are faux raised heel looks that'd be perfect as I see no one else wearing flats.
Any leads? Because ow.
Check this site out. I saw these the other day and they look really cool. There are a few different dressier & work kinds of shoes here. If you use the code "minimalist" you can save 20% plus anything over $100 in the US is free shipping.
Good find there, those look pretty neat. Anyone tried them yet? Are they worthy of adding to the directory?
There is a little history and a review of these shoes on www.minimalistrunningshoes.org, where I found out about these. I'm looking forward to trying the Suede Chukas.
Great suggestions everyone. I'm looking for something very traditional like this. http://www.florsheim.com/shop/style/17168.html
And a slick sole would be great, but every minimal shoe I've seen has a rubbery sole, which makes sense. Figured it'd be a long shot. Thanks.
How about finding a pair of slicks that you like and performing a few modification? Take off the heal. Round up the edges. Yank out the insole. Oh yeah, and hem up your dress pants :-)
Heh, Nathan I was thinking the same thing. Not a bad solution, I just may do that.
Have you tried looking at jazz shoes? I don't know about the guy's shoes, but I've seen girl's shoes that have flat, two-part soles on the bottom, and look like standard dress shoes on top.
Jazz shoes. never heard of them. I did a search and found these: http://www.dance4less.com/4412_jazz_shoes.htm
Not bad. .5" heel. I can deal with that. I ended up getting a similar pair from florsheim with a small heel and my feet are much happier. For my future pair I'll have to check out something like those jazz shoes. I don't think it's possible to find flat, leather soles. But I'm finding I can deal with the small heel.
These have no heel as far as I can tell: http://www.yougogirldancewear.com/Capezio-Freedom.htm
There's a few jazz shoes labled "freedom" that look promising.
I've heard if your shoe doesn't spin well enough for your dance style you can glue some suede to the sole to fix that. You could use that trick with any minimal shoe with a rubber bottom that you like.
If you are looking for really dressy shoes, then two excellent options are Russell Moccasin and Flexible Footwear, although both are quite pricey. If you are looking for dressy/casual, then I think VivoBarefoot has some options available.