Earth shoes (also known as Kalso Earth Shoes) were an unconventional style of shoe invented in the 1970s in Scandinavia by Danish shoe designer Anna Kalsø. Unlike most other shoes, the soles were thick and the heels were thin (Negative Heel Technology), so wearing them one walked heel-downward.
The shoes were introduced in the United States in New York City on April 1, 1970.
The shoes surged in popularity and were prominently featured on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and TIME Magazine. Unable to keep up with demand, franchise owners pursued litigation against the United States distributor of Kalso Earth Shoes, and the brand discontinued being sold at retail by the late 1970s.
A new firm with the same name is now in existence, and has recently introduced shoes with negative heels in a variety of styles ranging from sandals to running shoes.
In 2001, Kalso Earth Shoes re-surfaced as the rights to the name, technology and branded properties was purchased by Meynard Designs, Inc.
Today, Kalso Earth Shoes with "negative heels" include a range of styles from sandals to walking shoes.
The company also sells separate branded lines of footwear without the "negative heel -- "Earth Footwear" and "Earthies."
Famous quotes containing the words earth and/or shoe:
“The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son of earth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There was an old woman and she lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.
She crumm’d ‘em some porridge without any bread
And she borrowed a beetle, and she knocked ‘em all on the head.
Then out went the old woman to bespeak ‘em a coffin
And when she came back she found’ em all a-loffing.”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. There was an old woman who lived in a shoe (l. 1–6)