Footwear for my invisible fantasy race

Question

My setting (urban fantasy set in 1998 America) has a variation on the classic movie monster of the "invisible man". Here this species (tentatively called the neverthere) has a physical body that is permanently completely invisible via magic.

As for clothing, they have two options for making those disappear along with them. The superior, but far more expensive way, is that they can wear enchanted clothing woven with their magical DNA such that their body's magical properties recognize it as an extension of their own physical being. This isn't always an option, however, because the materials to enchant these things are rare.

The quick, cheap and dirty way is to simply extend their invisibility aura beyond the limits of their own body. However, the problem with this is that it's nowhere near an exact science. Extending your aura out into the exact shape of even rigid objects is next to impossible, and the closest most neverthere can manage is to extend it out into simple geometric shapes an inch or two larger than the space they and their clothes occupy. This works fine as long as they don't get close to any objects and thereby cause craters of invisibility to appear in them that give their location away, which is easy to manage with most articles of clothing as long as you stay away from people and surfaces.

...Which makes shoes an extreme problem for any neverthere trying to go fully invisible. Shoes, by their very nature, are nearly always in contact with the ground, and even if they wear extremely blocky shoes that can easily mesh with the shape of their aura extension, they're guaranteed to overshoot or undershoot the size of the aura they need to make by enough to make either the shoes visible or some of the floor invisible.

They could go barefoot, of course, and rely on their own flawlessly-cloaked feet to keep them invisible, but numerous varieties of terrain and weather would make that uncomfortable or even extremely dangerous. So now I'm trying to figure out if there's any manner of footwear that would make it possible for them to get rid of, or at least highly, highly minimize, this distinct weakness in their invisibility.

Given the rules I have laid out, what would be the most practical footwear for the neverthere to wear?

Answer 1

Platform shoes with transparent soles

Image courtesy Ali Express. That bottom part might need to be replaced with a soft but transparent layer that could be missed by the casual viewer.

It's worth noting that the basic problem with any invisible creature is that the grass beneath its feet will be crushed. As good a sign of their presence as the soles of any shoes.

Answer 2

Immediately I thought of Feet running Shoes:

Like this

or this

I don't know what the technical name of them is (I only know of them cause my Dad had a pair) - but the very thin sole should make the margin of error smaller than other shoes - meaning it's easier for them to wear.

Answer 3

Hairy feet

Hair is already part of their regular physique and it is organically shaped. It could be used to "trick" the aura into thinking that footwear covered in their own hair is part of their body.

One way this could work is to weave slippers from their own hair which would naturally also be invisible. However they would most likely wear out quicker than the hair would grow back.

Another way would be to weave the hair through more conventional footwear, and with some handwavium this could "trick" the aura to cover the entire area.

Similarly, their their finger- and toenails could be incorporated into this. More morbidly even, some very hardcore members of the race could graft shoes of their own leathered skin. Or someone else's...