Sort of.  Their new two-part shoes remind me of soft turnshoes and wooden pattens, which I want very much to try wearing for practical reasons.  Check it out (pic via TreeHugger).

So those leather boots or slippers slide out of the rubber outsoles.  There’s a tab at the back that keeps the heel in place.  Go look at the TreeHugger entry for more explanation.

What tickles me besides the ‘everything old is new again’ aspect, is that leaving one’s shoes at the door is one of the ‘green building’ line items on the Florida Green Building Coalition checklist.  (Actually, it’s ‘having a usable entry’, but that’s what you’re supposed to be using the entry for.)

It all boils down to how expensive resources are, doesn’t it.  (And the Sugar and Spice model on the right isn’t cheap, at $120/pair.)  If resources are plentiful = cheap, then there’s a million ways to use them up.  But when they become scarce…the basic solutions reduce.  This is why I do re-enactment!

Back to the shoe though – TreeHugger does a good job wondering about replacement rubber pattens, and whether things will get caught between the parts.  I appreciate that industrial production and modern understanding of podiatry probably makes a more comfortable shoewearing experience than I could make (certainly as a novice!) from leather and wood.  So if they’re still making these (and replacement parts, which I doubt, but am curious) next year, I may give them a try.  I disagree with TH that it’s ‘2 shoes in 1!’ because right now I don’t emulate Mr. Rogers and change my shoes at the door; I just put up with a messier house.  Also I find that I wear my shoes out from the inside just as much as I wear them down on the outside – so I think a whole new pair every so often would be in order.

But for people who really do tromp outside in the mud, and then come in, and go out, and go in, these are neat.