I bought these sandals for a party where I knew I would be on my feet for many hours.  I sampled them prior to wearing them, and spend some time walking around in them on my carpeted house.  I'm a firm believer in beauty over comfort and am usually willing to accomodate for a little bit of pain/discomfort while wearing super pretty shoes, but within 10 minutes of walking around in these sandals, I was having a lot of pain both at the toe area and also at the instep of the heel.  I have somewhat wide feet, and the straps at the toe really impeded blood flow to the rest of my foot.  Also I felt that there wasn't enough support at the the arch of my foot.  I still think that the sandal is beautiful and very unique, but even for me, the pain was not worth the appearance of the sandal.