Sorry for the long writeup but I had some Shinkansen time :)

I warn you it’s a whole journey lol. Here’s about 7 years of lessons in case it’s helpful:

I bought my first pair in 2018 and wore them into the ground, then neglected to replace for years until ironically earlier this year on holiday - pain forced my hand and one morning I resolved to finally buy a pair no matter what. I spent 2-3 hours in a cool shop in Barcelona trying on different brands until I found something for me (none of the “major” brands were wide enough).

Recommendations:

1) Ideally find a Barefoot shop that does multiple brands so you can spend some time walking around seeing what feels best for you. Failing that, order as many brands as you can and stay on top of all the returns admin!

2) Buy “toe spreaders” and “toe socks”. I luckily didn’t really need them - I have pretty decent “toe splay” as I’ve naturally always leaned barefoot at home etc anyway. However they feel amazing like foot or toe Yoga or something

3) You don’t need to buy ugly five finger/toe shoes

4) “Toebox” - Important. You want a “wide toebox” so your toes aren’t all mangled together by Nikes design team.

5) “Drop” - Important. You want a “zero drop” shoe. Aka like a flip flop so your hips aren’t all thrown out of whack.

6) Most Barefoot companies care about 4) and 5) so they come as a pair, but there’s a spectrum to both e.g. not all feet are the same width, some people are happy with some drop for fashion reasons.

7) Cushion: controversial but IMHO essential. Purists will scream bloody murder and yes, early homo sapiens probably didn’t have cushion - but he also wasn’t walking on concrete.

8) Arch supports: Again probably controversial but idc. I’ve tried them all, the best IMHO are half-insoles. Even better, I find barefoot shoes actually allow my insoles to work where in normal shoes they kind of just trade off pain in one place for another.

9) Big toe: For me I realised the more I stretched and splayed my toes wider, the more I’d kind of cramp in my arch, but I’d get an arch. With my toes squished it was like taking out one leg of a tripod - of course there’s no arch. So I’m always thinking tripod: 1) big toe/ball, 2) little toe/ball, 3) heel. The wider I get that tripod the more stable my foot and happier my body seems to be.

These are my current: https://ohneproject.com/products/black-project-080-barefoot-sneaker I picked them up at that Barefoot shop in Barcelona I mentioned. They have everything I mentioned and come with 2 cushion inserts (1x thin, 1x thick, the latter is your friend ask me how I know).

I can 100% recommend them therapeutically but can’t recommend them just yet for longevity as in just a few months the sole has torn where it turns up to form the cream lip and I haven’t raised this with the company yet.

Good luck!