 JANUARY 28 • 2021 | 35

L

eia Serlin was having 
trouble shopping for 
high heels to wear to 
her cousin’s wedding. Serlin, 
who suffers from an arthri-
tis-based auto-immune dis-
order, was specifically strug-
gling to find something fash-
ion-forward that would also 
stabilize her foot and allow 
her to walk comfortably. “It 
didn’t exist on the market,” 
Serlin said.
Serlin, an Albion College 
senior majoring in biolo-
gy and planning to go into 
dentistry, was in the midst 
of writing her honor’s thesis 
comparing dentistry and art. 
It was then that Serlin 
came up with an idea: What 
if there were a device any 
person could put on their 
shoe that could stabilize it, 
arthritis issues or not? 
Over the past four months, 
Serlin has brought that idea 
to fruition — designing, 
building and testing a high 
heel stabilizing device for her 
reimagined honor’s thesis.
“It really did come out of 
absolutely nowhere,” Serlin 
said. “I was doing my other 
thesis for a couple months 
before I came up with this, 
and I was like ‘could I poten-
tially do this as my thesis?’ 

and my adviser said, ‘Yeah, 
why not?’” 
The goal of Serlin’s thesis 
is to note if there is increased 
stability in arthritis and 
non-arthritis subjects when 
walking with the device sup-
port as compared to those 
without the support. 
Serlin has seen a lot of 
adversity over the course 
of the thesis, but it hasn’t 
deterred her. 
She has never created any-
thing like the device before. 
She has a background in art, 
specifically sculpture, met-
alwork and needlepoint, and 
some background in sewing, 
but didn’t have much experi-
ence using an actual sewing 
machine.
After weeks spent research-
ing joint stability issues and 
treatments, Serlin had a 
plan of picking things apart 
to resew them to create the 
device. Many of her materials 
came from dissecting ankle 
wraps, ankle braces and 
brassieres. Then she added 
stabilization components. 
Afterward, lace and rhine-
stones were added for the 
fashion-forward element.
“There was a lot of 
research that went into the 
design,” Serlin said. “Once 

I had the design done, then 
I had to actually sew it and 
make it happen. I ended up 
making two sizes, using bra 
extenders for the attachment 
to expand the ankle as need-
ed.” 
Finding a sewing machine 
was even difficult for Serlin, 
with everybody buying them 
to make masks in the midst 
of the pandemic. 

TESTING HER INVENTION
Serlin, though, describes 
finding test subjects as the 
toughest part of the project.

“COVID made it really dif-
ficult to recruit participants,” 
she said. “That’s hard any-
ways, getting people to come 
to a location to walk around 
in high heels for 20 minutes, 
but then you throw in the 
pandemic. Especially because 
I’m looking for people with 
arthritis and that’s a common 
high-risk category.” 
Serlin recruited hard on 
Facebook, Instagram and 
even had her mother help 
make calls.
By the end of the recruit-
ment process, Serlin was 

Albion College student creates 
high heel stabilizing device 
for those with arthritis.

DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER

A Better Foot 
Forward

HEALTH

COURTESY OF LEIA SERLIN

Leia Serlin and her high heel stabilizer

continued on page 36

