The dubious future of heeled sneakers A new model tries to convince the fashion crowd, will it make it?

The founder of the brand Spanx, Sara Blakely, has recently launched Sneex, the latest version of heeled sneakers designed to ensure maximum levels of comfort. It took a few simple adjustments to achieve the feat: Blakely "filled" the space between the foot and the sole to provide extra support, she balanced the weight distribution between the forefoot and the heel, and finally, she designed the shoe following the natural shape of the toes to ensure they wouldn’t get crushed. “Sneex are my love letter to every woman who has ever taken off her shoes at a party, who wears flats to work with heels in her bag, and who thought her days of wearing heels were over,” writes Blakely on the brand’s official website. Recently back in vogue on the latest runways, heeled sneakers – yet another revival of Y2K fashion – represent an answer to one of the most frequently asked questions in the footwear world: is it possible to make high heels comfortable? “We are told that ‘beauty is pain’… but I don’t think it has to be that way. As a consumer, I’ve wanted to solve this problem for years,” says Blakely. With a success that has always fluctuated due to their unconventional look, the challenge faced by heeled sneakers remains to combine comfort with the sleek and elegant aesthetic typical of stilettos.

Some are embracing the sneaker-heel trend as a true exercise in style. This is the case with independent Danish brands Bonnetje and MASCULINA, who at the exhibition organized by GANNI “FUTURE, TALENT, FABRICS” reimagined the New Balance T500. Bonnetje transformed the shoe into a stiletto with an internal spotted sole and a yellow sporty tongue, while MASCULINA created a multicolored sneaker with a platform and leopard print details. More than twenty years after Prada’s Bubble Sole, heeled sneakers continue to divide the fashion industry, torn between the allure of functionality and the appeal of conventional elegance. To understand what the future holds for this divisive shoe, we will have to wait for the consumers' response to Spanx’s Sneex. Flip or flop?