Is there a pair of heels that won't bite, tire the back or cause a tumble if you wear them nine hours straight?
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I have never been high on heels. Yes, they look great and make me feel tall and sexy, but who wants to survive hours of discomfort? What if someone made relaxed heels you could wear all day, and work in? Pooja Khilnani and daughter Neha seem to have read my mind. The two are behind The Shoe Duet and specialise in custom-made heels that can be worn for nine hours comfortably.
Pic/Rane Ashish
My shoes came made-to-order after taking measurements. For instance, if your foot is 10 cm wide and you wear a size 5, you’ll need a wider shoe which they will tweak to fit you. A pair takes 20 days to be delivered depending on the style ordered. I could choose from mules, wedges, blocks and passion heels (a cross between block and wedges). The stiletto is out because an ultra-narrow narrow heel can damage the spine and cause ankle fractures. I choose a pair of nude wedges for all-day wear, and black passion heels for a night out. Both are breathable and have a layer of padding on the heel that offers arch support. I wear the wedges on a regular workday and it doesn’t slow me down. I am also able to negotiate mucky streets and puddles with ease.
Pic/Rane Ashish
Unlike these, the black pair has an ankle strap for stability. But it needs to act like a noose around the ankle, else you could trip. I had to get an extra hole punched from a cobbler, but it turned out to be a snug pair.
What worked in their favour was that they were comfortable, not too high, and offered balance. I think they are perfect for heel beginners like myself. The colours available are limited nudes, dull gold, ivory and black. But what they lack in colour, they make up in style. And, they don’t bite.
Sound sleep lies in a box
Ask the staffer who carried your double bed mattress up a flight of stairs and squeezed it through your narrow doorway about the trauma experienced and you'll know why the mattress-in-a-box is growing to be a hit. Mechanically compressed to one-third its size, rolled and delivered in a box at your doorstep, the box mattress is one smart invention. And the guy who brought the concept to India is a Mumbaikar. Inspired by Garfield, Kabir Siddiq called the mattress SleepyCat, promising you peaceful 40 winks on what he says is an orthopaedic mattress with a gel layer and zipped outer cover that you can pop for a wash. So compact and hassle-free, it has managed to make it to the Andamans and army personnel in Kashmir, at half the delivery cost.
Band, baja, barat. And hariyali
We are told that the Indian wedding market was worth Rs 100 crore in 2015. Indian weddings cost anything between Rs 5 lakh to Rs 5 crore, and a huge chunk of what a family spends goes into designing intricate wedding cards, sometimes the size of cookie boxes. Elaborate stuff that ends up in every guest's dustbin. Divyanshu, a sustainable entrepreneur, is trying to convince couples to distribute cards made from pre-consumer cotton material which is biodegradable, embedded with seeds. Shaadi over, pop the card in a pot of mud, sprinkle it with water every day and watch it sprout petunias and chillis. His firm 21Fools, with workshops in Mumbai and Jaipur, has fashioned close to two million beej-kapas products since launching in 2014. Rent your clothes and crockery, choose a venue with natural lighting, and donate excess food, and your green wedding video is sure to go viral.
To check out their cards, drop a mail at wedding@21fools.com
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A channel to connect with India's folklore
If Cinderella or Arabian Nights seem passe in the Made in India-era, thank the lord for Prateek Sethi. Communication designer and the founder of TRIP Creative Services, Sethi has launched a YouTube channel called Folktales of India which showcase the rich variety of lore from across the country right from Ladakh—there's a fairy who cries tears of precious gems— to Kerala. Up ahead are videos on art styles from Nagaland, Assam, Bhuj and Bihar.
Prateek Sethi
#FolktalesOfIndia
Build a luxe wardrobe
The best part of Instagram is all the cool people on it. Our find this week is VRTTVintage run by model Diva Dhawan. You know her from her other handle #andthenwestretch. But there's more. She facilitates buying and selling previously owned luxury goods. Fashion, which gets a bad name in the green circles, is now sustainable. You can mail her your stuff and they will find the right buyer for you. And, in case you don't wish to buy, just ogle.
Scroll this for film reccos
Mahima Venugopalan, a chemical engineer in the employ of Infosys, is an egghead and cinephile. She has seen so many obscure indie, foreign and regional movies, series and documentaries that she has lost count. "Considering the amount of content I have consumed, I thought it was time I had a visual archive of the same," she says. On her Insta page, bitchyawatchin, she recommends Korean films (The Advocate), docu-series such as Ava DuVernay's When They See Us and podcasts such as Last Podcast on the Left. Each post contains a brief review, along with the streaming platform. "I have always wanted to create awareness on the movies that have captivated me and that digress from mainstream media," she says. "But, most importantly, the page has helped me direct questions from my friends on, "B***h, what to watch?" to the page."
@bitchyawatchin on Instagram
Curated by Gitanjali Chandrasekharan, Jane Borges and Anju Maskeri
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