Can anyone think of a lace-to-toe pattern shoe or boot, mass-produced or one-off, with relief notches cut out of the bottoms of the eyelet stays / facings, down over the balls of the feet, to relieve the bunching-up that happens when the forefoot bends?
I notice cutting these kinds of notches has become very common at the tops of the insteps of higher boots, to avoid bunching up over the ankles when they bend. Examples:
I wonder why the same logic doesn’t apply to the bottoms of eyelet stays when they also cross where joints bend. In each case, the relief cuts lessen resistance to bending and avoid potential pinching and cracking as material folds up on itself.
I got to thinking about this after taking a short fly-away trip in my childhood-standard standby Adidas Samba indoor-soccer sneakers. Trapsing around today, I noticed the same bunching over the creases of some hand-me-down Danner Lite II hiking boots.
Looking at a few of the photos above, the patternmakers also seem to be spacing hardware apart more widely across the ankle joints, making room for the notches. But I suppose that could also be done down over the toe, by pushign the first eyelet past the joint forward.