Review: SKEANIE Shoes

When it comes to children’s footwear I admit it.

I am fussy.

Ever since, oh however many children ago, I have disliked putting their little feet into shoes too soon.  Even once my children have begun walking I prefer to wait until they are established at toddling around before buying their first pair of shoes.  My thinking is that their feet are so malleable that putting them into ill fitting shoes, or shoes which are simply not suitable for them can do long lasting damage.

When it comes to their first shoes I quickly dismiss any I feel are too tough, not soft enough and those with too hard soles.

I told you I was fussy.

We recently had the opportunity to try out a pair of SKEANIE shoes but having never heard of them I decided to take a look around the SKEANIE shoes website first in an effort to find out more about them.

The SKEANIE brand was created by Natasha Barber, an Australian mum who was as fussy as I am about putting tiny feet into shoes.  Sharing my opinion that little people had fragile feet Natasha embarked on a two year journey of researching and designing high quality, soft leather shoes that were lacking on the market.

Since then SKEANIE shoes have been praised and recommended not only by mums but also podiatrists and paediatricians.

The Fair Trade shoes are handcrafted from super soft eco-leather.  Your child can start off by wearing the soft soled range made with genuine leather uppers – perfect for fitting around delicate baby feet rather than expecting baby feet to fit around the shoe.  Then your child can  move on to the Junior range which are perfect for walking about in thanks to the flexible rubber soles.

The SKEANIE collection comes in a range to suit all tastes and occasions for both boys and girls and we opted to try out the classic Boat shoe design on Joseph.

The thing that immediately struck me was just how soft the shoes were.  Even though we had chosen a pair from the Junior range given that Joseph had already been walking for a few months the entire shoe – soles and all – were amazingly soft and flexible.

Whilst we were busy admiring the excellent quality of the shoes Joseph was keen to try them on.

He was still wearing them two hours later.

Whilst I really could not fault the shoes at all the only thing I found to be a disadvantage was trying to work out the sizing system to order Joseph the correct size as it’s not the same as the sizing system we are used to but that’s not a huge issue to deal with and certainly not something that would put me off from ordering.

Having said that regarding the sizing I think the shoes themselves are definitely wonderful quality and by far the best kind of shoe I would expect a non walker or early walker to have.  I even thought the prices were fabulously reasonable given the high standard of production and quality of material and I will definitely be placing shoe orders with SKEANIE in the future.

You can see the full range of SKEANIE products over on their website but we are offering one lucky winner the chance to win a pair of SKEANIE shoes of their choice.  Click over to our SKEANIE competition to enter!