It’s that time of year when all the invitations start falling through the letterbox for spring/summer beauty products, and guess which are the ones I usually ignore because we know they don’t work, right?  The anti-cellulite products!  

Last week I attended the launch of Jergens - an American household name that’s just arrived here - body moisturisers with 95% natural ingredients and some pretty impressive claims including one body lotion that promises to firm your skin in two days.   I’m taking it on holiday with me next week and I’ll let you know the results! 

But today, I went to the new spring/summer range launch for FitFlop, the flip-flop that claims to give you a workout while you work.  Let me be honest here - Marcia Kilgore is a friend of mine - so I’m always going to be biased about what I think of the shoes.  I know her well enough to know that she wouldn’t put anything out there if she didn’t believe in it 110%.  But the cynical side of me also thought… well, they probably work a little bit but who knows, maybe it’s also partly a placebo effect, how can they test these things anyway?

 At today’s launch I asked lots of questions.  Really, they nearly gave me a badge for Top Question Asker.  And whilst I’m the first to admit I usually hate the science part of a presentation because a) it’s boring and b) you can make facts and figures correspond to whatever “proof” or “evidence” you are looking for to make your anti-ageing cream/butt-lifter/elbow-smoothing product look like it’s working, this presentation raised a few very interesting side-effects about wearing FitFlops I hadn’t really thought of before. 

It all started when Marcia received letters - lots of them - from FitFlop wearers confessing that although they started wearing the shoes because they were comfortable, or they were partial to a metallic sequin with a soft kid-leather lining, or they hoped that who knows, they might actually do something for cellulite, after a while they noticed other benefits.  

Knee injuries, Lyme Disease, heel pain, lower back and sciatica problems, foot swelling, even cramps, were not what the shoes were created for, but it seemed that by wearing them on a regular basis, people’s metaphysical feet problems were eased considerably.  And no one knew why. 

“Obviously we had the shoes independently tested at the time we launched them, to check they would work the muscles more intensely while the wearer was walking,” said Marcia to an audience of about six glossy magazine girls.  ”But these results meant we needed to do more testing, to find out why this unexpected benefit was happening.” 

She has been working closely with Dr Philip Graham-Smith of Salford University who has embarked on a programme of further testing using electrodes and cameras to photograph the muscles of student-testers wearing a variety of different shoes: a “sensible” shoe, an MBT, a normal flip-flop and a prototype of a new FitFlop/shoe which may launch next year (if we’re very lucky).  

What they found was that the wobbleboard effect of the FitFlop means your muscles have to work harder. The three different types of density foam in the sole mean that the pressure as the foot goes down, doesn’t hit the heel so hard.  As you put your heel down, the shoe disperses the pressure along to the mid-section, and then to the end, in a very natural way, simulating the way that we walk when we’re bare foot.  This means that the knock-on force is evenly distributed between knee and hip joints.  And there you have it.. no related back/knee/ankle problems.

Of course, all the while they were talking my eyes were drawn to the array of new styles lined up before me.  Delicious pastel pinks and blues; pretty pale gold sequins; urban black patent.  And some new ones, without a thong toe, they call them “slides” in the trade.  I’m going to order some for my mother in law, my 96 year old neighbour, and my girl friend who walks with a stick following a car accident, just to see if they help.  And obviously there might be a few pairs coming my way too.. All that cellulite needs testing.. 

Which is why we’re all still in love with them, why we want more than one pair and why true FitFlop afficionados have as many as seven (count ‘em).  

Marcia is a very clever woman.  As well as being the world’s number one pun-smith (read the text on a bottle of Soap & Glory, another of her creations, and you’ll laugh out loud),  she revolutionised the world of urban spas when she created Bliss. When she  first came up with the idea for FitFlops she knew she was onto a winner because “all the hair on my body stood up the moment I thought of it!”.  

The attraction for women is obvious  - as Marcia says, “if cellulite is going to disappear, it has to be something that  we find easy to do.   I’ve never believed in endermology particularly, and it’s expensive and time-consuming.  We’re not going to rub creams in regularly.  It has to be something that is constant, something we’re doing all the time, something that fits into anyone’s schedule.”

And what could be easier than wearing a shoe?