Roccamore in Politiken!
Danish newspaper Politiken featured roccamore. Here's a quick English summary. Link to full Danish article at the bottom. In 2014, Frederikke Antonie Schmidt decided to change the world of stilettos and create a comfortable high heel than women could actually wear every day. Two years later, roccamore shoes are all built with orthopedic insoles that shape your foot to walk as anatomically correct as possible, in high heels. They have even been scientifically validated by a research study at Hvidovre Hospital that shows how roccamore's reduce the pressure on your forefoot by 26% and arch by 44%, compared to other high heels on the market."As a doctor, I can never recommend heels, but, it looks like roccamore shoes are healthier for your feet compared to other high heels."
J.Penny, Orthopedic Surgeon at Hvidovre Hospital.
To find out whether roccamore heels really work, a group of 22 women were selected to wear three kinds of shoes, regular stilettos, roccamores and sneakers, each shoe for three days and with approx. 4500-5000 steps per day. Orthopedic Surgeon, Jeannette Penny, added speciale "pressure pads" into the shoes, to carefully measure how the pressure of the feet changed every day - and the results were astonishing. Obviously if you walk around all day, your feet will get tired, but in roccamores the comfort is higher.
"Not surprisingly the women found that the sneakers were the most comfortable, but the next prefered choice was the roccamore shoes."
J.Penny, Orthopedic Surgeon at Hvidovre Hospital.
During the study, the 22 women were also tested while walking on a hospital treadmill wearing roccamore shoes, while the Jeannette Penny measured the impact of pressure on the foot. She explaines, that the point of such an experiment is to find out if the pressure is channeled evenly from the foot's pressure point throughout the rest of the foot. When placing a compression pad under the forefoot you then get a greater pressure at the arch of the foot and avoid that any parts of the foot is suffering from too much pressure. Creating Comfy High Heels What initially made Frederikke Schmidt think of creating comfortable high heels, was the daily struggle she experienced while working as a shoes designer in Florence, walking her heels everyday on the many Italian cobblestone streets.
"High heels are always made with flat insoles, never insoles that actually respect women's feet. You could say they are made for standing still and being pretty, not for walking." says Frederikke.
In 2014, Frederikke met an orthopedic shoemaker, Kenneth Elsgaard, back in Copenhagen and she convinced him to help her develop an insole that would correct the feet to walk without pain in high heels. They worked on the insole for 2 years, but as soon as Frederikke started wearing it, people noticed. "In the beginning, friends would call me to ask for insoles and I would send them down to Kenneth, so he could make more. When friends of friends then started calling, I knew I was on to something good."
In 2015, Frederikke raised funds for her first collection through the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and in September 2015, almost 1.000 shoes landed with their happy backers. Frederikke then decided to skype with about 300 backers to learn from their experience of walking with the shoes. She spent 3 months gathering feedback and listening to the stories of the users, while working to better understand better how she could improve comfort and design of her shoes. She eventually decided that the comfort of the Spanish producer wasn't good enough, so she decided to move everything to Tuscany, Italy, where she now works with a small family-owned factory that only produces for Valentino, Tabitha Simmons and Roccamore. You can find the full article in Danish here or head back to our Shop.