Women prefer to wear trainers rather than high heels. It’s official. Mintel has just released a report telling us what we actually already knew. Apparently in the last year, 37% of women who bought shoes went for trainers while 33% bought heels, which must mean that there’s another 30% buying flats of some kind.

You only have to look around any workplace where they don’t have high heel-focused dress code to see that we may be wearing a dress on top but look further down and you’ll see flats, trainers, and skate shoes, and that we’re keeping high heels for after dark (maybe – personally I wear flat all the time).

The new figure represents a shift in just a year with the trainers-to-heels ratio an even split (35% each) 12 months ago.

It’s the 35-44 age group driving this (again, no surprise there as there come s a point in every women’s life where her feet just say “NO”) with 48% of them buying trainers and only 30% buying heels.

While Mintel said the change is partly due to the athleisure trend with women integrating sports looks into their style, I tend to think it’s more of a general trend. As I said, women don’t feel that they have to go allover sports to wear trainers and wil happily team them with more traditionally feminine pieces. It’s just a wear-anytime thing.

Mintel estimates that UK footwear sales will rise 5.4% this year to reach £10.5bn.