The Everyday Shoe That Folds

From Inventing the Foldable Shoe to Rethinking What It Could Become

Every now and then, a product comes along and becomes so much a part of everyday life that it's difficult to remember how we ever managed without it. Touch screen phones, the wheelie suitcase, reusable coffee cups and wireless headphones are just a few examples that spring to mind.

The foldable shoe feels rather like that to me.

Today, the idea of carrying a beautiful pair of foldable ballet flats in your handbag feels perfectly natural. Women take them to weddings, pack them for holidays, keep them in desk drawers at work and slip them into their luggage before travelling. They have become part of modern life.

Yet there was a time when none of that existed.

When I founded Cocorose in 2007, the foldable shoe was not simply a new collection. It was an entirely new product category. Today, our Ultimate Guide to Foldable Shoes explores how that original invention has evolved into a modern wardrobe essential for commuting, travel and everyday life.

The Shoe That Stopped People in Their Tracks

In those early days, I spent many weekends standing behind a market stall in the Backyard Market on Brick Lane in East London.

Customers would wander past before stopping at my display, giving me the perfect opportunity for a little retail theatre.

I would pick up a pair of shoes, fold them in half and place them inside their compact travel purse.

Almost without fail, the reaction was the same. Eyes widened. Smiles appeared. Many asked me to do it again.

Looking back, it felt less like selling shoes and more like performing a magic trick.

What those weekends taught me was that people don't always know they're looking for an innovation until they see it in front of them. After all, no one was searching for foldable shoes. They had never imagined such a thing could exist.

They weren't simply looking at a new style of ballet flat. They were discovering an entirely new category of footwear.

Not long afterwards, I exhibited at my very first trade show. As I flicked through the exhibition magazine, I came across a full-page feature describing Cocorose as The Next Best Thing.

For a young business, it felt surreal.

Not because we had created a beautiful shoe, but because we had introduced an entirely new way of thinking about one.

The foldable shoe was genuinely revolutionary.

Soon afterwards, I was invited to move from my market stall into a permanent retail space on Brick Lane. It was there that another unexpected moment unfolded. A customer wandered into the shop, discovered the collection and fell in love with the concept.

She later became our very first international distributor.

Looking back, I realise those early years were never really about selling shoes.

They were about introducing people to an idea they had never encountered before.

Everything else grew from there.

The First Invention

Like many inventions, the foldable shoe began with a problem.

For me, that problem was wonderfully ordinary.

Every morning, I packed a bulky spare pair of shoes into my handbag before leaving for work. Like countless other women commuting into the City, I loved wearing heels, but after a long day my feet wanted something altogether different for the journey home.

That everyday frustration would eventually become the inspiration behind Comfortable Ballet Flats: What Designing the World's First Foldable Shoe Taught Me About Comfort, where I reflect on how my understanding of comfort evolved over the years.

The choice seemed strangely limited.

Carry a bulky pair of spare shoes, or feel frumpy with a more sensible option.

Neither felt like a particularly elegant solution.

At the time, another revolution was taking place.

Technology was becoming smaller, lighter and more portable. Mobile phones, laptops and BlackBerrys were transforming the way we worked, travelled and organised our lives. Modern products were adapting to fit around people, rather than expecting people to adapt around them.

I remember thinking that footwear deserved the same kind of thinking.

Why couldn't a beautiful pair of shoes become easier to carry?

Why couldn't comfort travel with us?

Those questions eventually led to my invention of the foldable shoe.

Designed using soft, flexible materials with a breathable leather insole, they folded neatly into a compact travel purse, allowing women to carry elegant footwear wherever the day happened to take them.

The innovation wasn't simply that the shoes folded. It was that they allowed comfort to travel with us, making it easier to walk further, stay out longer, travel more lightly and embrace the spontaneity that so often makes life memorable.

Looking back, I would later come to realise that the real impact wasn't simply making comfort portable, but what that comfort allowed women to experience, which is an idea I explore further in Why Comfortable Shoes Make You Walk Further.

The foldable shoe had found its place.

The next chapter wasn't about reinventing it. It was about discovering where it could go next.

The Second Invention

The success of our foldable shoes opened up opportunities for lots of different conversations and I would often hear the same question being asked.

"Could you make them in leather?"

It was a perfectly reasonable question. Leather is naturally associated with quality, craftsmanship and longevity. It moulds beautifully to the foot over time, becoming softer and more comfortable with every wear.

But for me, the answer was never going to be as simple as just changing the material.

Those conversations encouraged me to think beyond simply recreating our original foldable shoe in leather.

If we were going to introduce a leather collection, it had to deserve its place alongside every other ballet flat already on the market.

The leather had to feel exceptionally soft. The cushioning had to support long days on your feet. The fit had to gently cosset the foot, and the silhouette had to look effortlessly elegant.

Most importantly, it had to become the pair women instinctively reached for, whether they ever folded them or not.

I still remember trying on the very first prototype and even now, I can picture that moment.

The shoe gently cosseted my foot in a way I hadn’t experienced before. The support was there. The fit felt beautifully balanced. The leather was wonderfully soft and the silhouette looked chic, stylish and exactly as I had hoped it would.

I knew immediately that we had created something special, not just because the shoe folded, but because it was such a beautiful shoe to wear.

The folding simply made it even better.

That first leather collection introduced what we called the Sandringham style. Nearly two decades later, it remains one of the defining styles within our collection. Alongside designs such as the Clapham, Harrow, Buckingham, Piccadilly and others, it has become part of the fabric of Cocorose, not because it followed a passing trend, but because women have continued choosing to wear these styles year after year.

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of meeting Susie at our pop up at the RHS Malvern Spring Festival. She told me,

"I've only ever worn Cocorose since then. I first discovered them in a little boutique in South Africa over fifteen years ago."

Another customer, Adeline, simply wrote:

"Still the best flats ever. Been wearing Cocorose for 10 years."

For any designer, there are few compliments greater than that\.

My own instincts were soon confirmed when we unveiled the collection at our next trade show.

The response was extraordinary.

The Everyday Shoe That Folds

Looking back, I realise our original foldable shoes and our leather collection were two chapters of the same invention.

The first introduced the world to the foldable shoe.

The second explored what a foldable shoe could become.

That difference in intention found its way into every detail, even the presentation.

Our original foldable shoes arrived folded neatly inside their travel purse because the innovation itself deserved to take centre stage. Customers were discovering an entirely new category of footwear, and there was genuine delight in revealing just how compactly and intelligently the shoes folded away.

The leather collection deserved a different introduction. Each pair was presented in our signature black and gold presentation boxes, with the travel purse tucked alongside it rather than taking centre stage.

It is a small detail, but I have always believed it tells the story of an everyday shoe that folds without saying a word.