CBS News
Spanx founder unveils new line of stiletto-heeled sneakers called Sneex
Nearly 25 years after Spanx shapewear took hold of women’s silhouettes, its founder has unveiled another first: the stiletto-heeled sneaker.
Sneex, a hybrid stiletto touted on the company’s website as a “hy-heel,” is the latest invention by entreprenuer Sara Blakely, the woman behind the billion-dollar brand, Spanx, the undergarments worn by the likes of Oprah and Gwyneth Paltrow that took the fashion world by storm in 2000.
With her latest invention, Blakely has set out to create a luxury high-heeled shoe that’s as comfortable as a pair of sneakers, resulting in a bold design that appears to be a literal interpretation of the concept.
Sneex.com
Made in Spain, the shoes feature materials such as Napa leather and Italian mesh, and are available in a variety of styles intended for casual and formal wear.
“It was a long development — a lot of factory development, like 9-10 years,” Blakely recently told CBS Morning News, describing a start-and-stop search for a manufacturer that took her to factories throughout Europe amid countless rejections.
“A lot of factories weren’t set up to kind of do the performance of a sneaker with the stiletto, so it was a lot of trial and error,” she said. “At one point in development, I go, ‘I just want my high heel to feel like my sneaker,’ and then I just went, ‘OK guys, let’s just try it and see if it works.'”
In creating Sneex, Blakely said she tackled three main pain points that women have with their heels. “The first is, we didn’t want the toe to squeeze your toes. The second was there’s always been a gap between your foot and the shoe — in a heel — in the middle where the arch is. We filled in the gaps so your whole foot is supported,” she said.
The third pain point is balance. “Traditional high heels, for hundreds of years, 80% of our weight is on the ball of our foot and 20% is on the heel,” the inventor said, adding that with Sneex, the weight distribution on the wearer’s foot is more of a 50/50 distribution.
Hand-out
“So even though you’re in a 3-inch stiletto, you almost feel like you’re flat on the ground. It’s like a really weird feeling and they’re really, really comfortable for that reason,” said Blakely.
The only thing higher than the 3-inch heel on Sneex is their price point. A pair of the quirky luxury heels will cost you between $395 and $595. That may be a pain point in itself for many consumers, especially as Americans cut back on spending amid high prices on day-to-day items such as food, gas and shelter.
For those who do have the money to spend, however, Blakely said Sneex are “worth every penny.”
At least 11 employees were taken to hospitals and residents were urged to shelter in place on Tuesday after an explosion at a Louisville, Kentucky, business.
The Louisville Metro Emergency Services reported on social media a “hazardous materials incident” at 1901 Payne St., in Louisville. The address belongs to a facility operated by Givaudan Sense Colour, a manufacturer of food colorings for soft drinks and other products, according to officials and online records.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said emergency teams responded to the blast around 3 p.m. News outlets reported that neighbors heard what sounded like an explosion coming from the business. Overhead news video footage showed an industrial building with a large hole in its roof.
WLKY-TV
“The cause at this point of the explosion is unknown,” Greenberg said in a news conference. No one died in the explosion, he added.
Greenberg said officials spoke to employees inside the plant. “They have initially conveyed that everything was normal activity when the explosion occurred,” he said.
The Louisville Fire Department said in a post on the social platform X that multiple agencies were responding to a “large-scale incident.”
The Louisville Metro Emergency Services first urged people within a mile of the business to shelter in place, but that order was lifted in the afternoon. An evacuation order for the two surrounding blocks around the site of the explosion was still in place Tuesday afternoon.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
A rare square 37-carat emerald owned by the Aga Khan fetched nearly $9 million at auction in Geneva on Tuesday, making it the world’s most expensive green stone.
Sold by Christie’s, the Cartier diamond and emerald brooch, which can also be worn as a pendant, dethrones a piece of jewelry made by the fashion house Bulgari, which Richard Burton gave as a wedding gift to fellow actor Elizabeth Taylor, as the most precious emerald.
In 1960, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan commissioned Cartier to set the emerald in a brooch with 20 marquise-cut diamonds for British socialite Nina Dyer, to whom he was briefly married.
Dyer then auctioned off the emerald to raise money for animals in 1969.
FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
By chance that was Christie’s very first such sale in Switzerland on the shores of Lake Geneva, with the emerald finding its way back to the 110th edition this year.
It was bought by jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels before passing a few years later into the hands of Harry Winston, nicknamed the “King of Diamonds.”
“Emeralds are hot right now, and this one ticks all the boxes,” said Christie’s EMEA Head of Jewellery Max Fawcett. “…We might see an emerald of this quality come up for sale once every five or six years.”
Also set with diamonds, the previous record-holder fetched $6.5 million at an auction of part of Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor’s renowned jewelry collection in New York.
