What you will find in Massimo Santini shoes
Applied rhinestones return across this whole page: tiny crystals fixed to the upper, either covering it entirely or drawing a band over the instep. They appear on the round-toe loafers, on the ballet flats and on the mid-heel slingback, always over a base of leather or technical fabric. The decoration asks for one precaution only: dust it with a soft dry brush and never wash it, because water dissolves the adhesive that holds the crystals.
The second family on the page is the woven leather sandals, where the straps are plaited rather than cut solid. Woven leather gives slightly with the volume of the foot, which is why it forgives hot days better than a rigid strap. The wedge reaches six and a half centimetres and spreads the weight across the whole sole of the foot, while the backless flat and the flat sandal stay around one and a half. In both cases the footbed is padded leather.
A ballet flat is the low shoe cut away at the instep, and in the mary jane version it adds a strap that crosses the top of the foot and fastens at the side. That strap is not a decorative detail: it is what stops the shoe slipping off the heel at every step, and it is why a mary jane holds up through a day on your feet better than a plain ballet flat. Here the insole is memory foam, which compresses under weight and returns to shape once the shoe comes off.
Among the closed shapes, the loafer with a leather insole and the one with a memory foam insole behave differently: leather absorbs moisture and needs a day of rest every other day, foam gives immediate support but does not breathe in the same way. One note on sizing: one of the micro-rhinestone loafers runs generous and is worth taking half a size down. To compare other flat shapes for women there is the women's ballet flats page.
