Our in-house podiatrist is passionate about shoes and feet. In a country such as South Africa which enjoys the benefits of a mild climate for most of the year, many people choose to be unshod in leisure hours. Her undergraduate work (published in The Foot, 2005), dispelled the myth that wider feet are caused by walking unshod (barefoot) in childhood. Rather, foot width development is dependent on genetic factors, shared by multiple ethnic groups. Guided by questions raised by the late Dr William Rossi, who was a leading consultant to the American footwear industry,
and with a firm belief in the ability of science to improve the fit metric of fashionable shoes, her work seeks to find evidence to support stylish footwear design that is comfortable and promotes good foot function. Her ground breaking 3-D measurement study of women's feet in South Africa, utilizing a lazer scanner and patented methodology, yielded data that helped explain why the percentage of women reporting foot pathology due to their shoes (80%) was so high.
One of the reasons found was that 1 in 3 woman in South Africa need a wider shoe across the toes, yet still have a relatively narrow heel. Also revealed is that no two feet are identical, so that the Froggie mission is not one of developing the non-existent perfect shoe but rather of using technology and design features which provide stylish comfort and good foot function for as many foot types as possible.
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of the Soul of Africa Initiative