feeling soleful

Filed Under Going Green, Stuff | May 20, 2009

Kids’ shoes are the perfect place to go a little overboard. After all, past a certain age you can’t get away with shoes that combine hot pink or lime with yellow, so you need to take advantage of these possibilities while you can. Which is why we love shoes from Calgary-based company, Little Soles.

Entrepreneurial mama Jessica Jacobs launched Little Soles in 2005. And her shoes are seriously stylin’ while taking into account the needs of fast-growing little feet. With a new Baby Soles line, urban and classic infant shoes as well as a children’s line, you’ll find everything from a classic navy sandal for tots to a seriously hip yellow and red shoe that can best be described as a Mary Jane boot. And their looks belie their price, as they fall in the $30 – $40 range, rather than the over $60 price tag attached to a lot of well-designed kids’ shoes.

But Jacobs is about more than just style. When she started planning the Little Soles line she discovered that kids’ toys are subject to more stringent safety regulations than their footwear. Leather, for example, tends to be dyed with toxic dyes while shoes are generally held together with glue containing formaldyehyde.

Taking it one step at a time, Jacobs made sure her new Baby Soles line was toxin free (after all, who puts their feet in their mouths the most?) and then went toxin-free with her Urban Infant’s Shoes and Squeaky Shoes lines. But don’t take her word for it, she has her shoes tested by an independent, accredited company. Rather like farms that are transitional organic, next up she’ll be transitioning her Classic Infant’s Shoes and Children’s Shoes so they’re also free from harmful dyes and toxins.

And there are no rules and regulations driving her to adopt such stringent safety regulations, instead it solely based on her own moral decisions. Which makes us like her shoes even more.

Little Soles: www.littlesoles.ca