Cheap Women’s Shoes Online
One of my current partners bought two sets of shoes at Comme il Faut, which is at the moment the premier tango cheap women's shoe store in Buenos Aires.
She got them in the store itself, fitted by the tireless staff there. One pair she loves. She can dance in them for two and a half hours nonstop before her feet give out.
The other pair are only good for just over one hour. Apparently, small differences in fit really matter. At least they do when you are balancing above 3 ½ inch heels.
How can you tell a really good fit?
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Talking this over with both tango dancers and ballet dancers (pointe shoes hurt a lot, too), I have a theory.
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A good fit is snug enough to hold your foot with a little bit of a squeeze but not so snug as to be tight.
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Men can get there with leather shoes, because leather can start out too tight, but stretch to fit. Women’s shoes have too little material to be allowed to stretch into fit.
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If they have much to give, they will stretch past fitting soon thereafter. So the initial stretch in cheap women’s shoes is mostly give in the stitching. This is a fixed amount.
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The idea of a snug but not tight fit is that it holds the metatarsal arch, i.e. the ball of the foot. This braces the secondary arch between the ball of the big toe and the ball of the little toe so that it can stays an arch even under load or twisting. But it does not cram the arch together so that it grinds the joints.
A good fit also binds the arch up well enough that it slows swelling.
Swelling happens as the feet accumulate fluid from use or from just standing a long time.
People with strong, flexible feet have less of this, which is one reason some can dance all night and others cannot. Flexible feet do two things.
First, they cushion landings and push-offs so there is less bruising. And second, the flexing itself pumps fluid out.
One obvious problem is that a shoe that has just the right amount of snugness first thing in the morning is too darn tight late in the day when the milonga is about to start, and the shoe that is perfect for the first dance in the milonga is small two hours later.
Some solve this problem by having a series of shoes with slightly different fits. They switch to their “comfort” shoes later in the evening. These shoes are old friends.
Often they are shoes that were perfect for the first dance earlier in their lives, but have stretched from good use, since. All I think the most important is the women’s shoes have adjustments.