Sometimes people ask for baby's childrens' or teenager's
vegan shoes.
This is an impossible or hard market to serve. For Veganline.com
at the moment it is impossible. Mail-order footwear sales to
adults are a compromise: feet do not come in standard ratios
of girth to length to anything else and adults have to compromise
and send shoes back and forth until they find-out what fits.
When feet are growing the compromise is greater and for now
seems too great: the constraint of an ill-fitting shoe can stunt
growth.
Also, parents are shorter of money and time than the rest of
us and more subject to demands of schools and children, so their
decisions are made under pressure from the start.
- For babies
Veganline recommends a sock with any kind of home-made sole attached
to keep out some of the dirt that comes of toddling on parks,
pavements, roads, dog-poo, doctor's waiting room carpets and
flower beds in random order. Veganline.com's own insoles
may be suitable for cutting-up and sewing or Evo-sticking on
to a pair of socks, or synthetic chamois leather, or anything
you have to hand. Maybe any extra dirt and infection that a toddler
and parent suffers is a smaller thing than any constraint on
the shape of the toddler's foot as it grows.
- For children
the problem of soft feet is not quite so bad, but significant.
And of course some adults love telling others what to wear. These
people are drawn to the occupation of second head-mistress with
extra-ordinary lack of self-awareness. So how to cope?
We don't know. We have a lot of Sensible
Shoes in boys or unisex sizes.
Under parent pressure we did get some US Brass or similar plastic
childrens' shoes but they are so horrible we were too embarrassed
to put them on the web site - they are available on request in
brown. Also, in future, we hope to get some trainers in various
sizes and already we have ankle boots as small as size UK2. We
will soon be stocking Ethletic trainers
- the traditional style with a rubber front and sides under canvas
- in an all black design that may trouble headmasters less than
black and white.
- For teenagers
the problem is more of being an awkward, angular, self-invented
person amongst others the same but at different rates of growing-up.
The problem of wearing the available veg shoes amongst more grown-up
and linked-in cliques who most likely reject is a serious problem
but it passes. Meanwhile, for teenagers the best option is to
look for nice people who aren't too chip-on-the-shoulder-cool
and for shoe shop-keepers the best option is to get better shoes.
Watch this web site.
None of this is clear but it is often the best answer available
to give. |
