Earth shoes were a style of shoe invented in the 1970s in Scandinavia, to invert established practices for those persons who wanted to be unconventional. Unlike other shoes, the soles were thick and the heels were thin, so wearing them one walked heel-downward. The advertisments said that it was like walking on the beach, where one's footprints are this way.

No professional running shoe (these came later) ever took up this method. The firm is still in existence, though it does not make shoes in this form any more and is just another brand.