ACE 2026 Innovation: Sara Blakely
Sara Blakely has never been interested in following convention. She built her career — and her legacy — on questioning assumptions. With Spanx, she upended the shapewear industry, exposing decades of design inertia. Now, with Sneex, she is doing it again — this time, targeting one of fashion's most entrenched contradictions: the high heel.
For generations, women have accepted that elegance requires physical sacrifice. Blakely is rejecting that premise outright. Her question is disarmingly straightforward: what if it doesn’t have to?
The answer is Sneex — not a novelty hybrid, but a ground-up reimagining of the high heel, engineered with the structural sensibility of a sneaker. “Women have always been ready for comfortable high heels,” Blakely noted. “The problem was that the industry wasn’t.”