OUCH! Why youcan’t find shoes that fit
FEELING the squeeze in your shoes today? Be it a burgeoning blister on your little toe or some developing bunions, many of us endure niggling ailments caused by ill-fitting shoes.
And it seems there might be a surprising reason: European sizing.
Most footwear imported into the UK is stamped with continental sizes, which are out of sync with the more precise British system we grew up with.
Conflicting advice on how the two match up is one of the reasons so many of us wear ill-fitting shoes. A recent survey by fashion brand Long Tall Sally found a third of British women wear the wrong size footwear. This makes our feet age more quickly than the rest of our bodies, causing long-term health problems.
Here’s why our shoes are hurting more than ever — and what to do about it . . .
IS EUROPE TO BLAME FOR OUR BUNIONS?
MoST of us know our British shoe size. It’s been ingrained in our memories since our feet stopped growing — for women, that’s around the age of 14. But over the past 20 years, the British shoe industry has shrunk and more shoes are imported from Europe and the Far East, which use entirely different measuring systems.
You’ll recognise the continental system as going from around adult size 36 to 42, as opposed to our three to 11. We’re all feeling the squeeze as there is still no exact way to marry the two systems.
The space between a British half-size is 4.2mm, compared with 6.6mm between European full sizes. Though European half-sizes do exist, they rarely find their way on to our shops’ shelves.
To add to the confusion, retailers use conversion charts that give conflicting advice about the size equivalents.
According to shoe historian Rebecca Shawcross, author of Shoes: An Illustrated History, our system is 700 years old. Edward II decreed that grains of barleycorn should be the basis used for measuring feet in England back in 1324.
Three grains laid end to end equalled an inch. ‘Thirty-six laid end to end was deemed the average length of a man’s foot,’ says Shawcross, who adds the sizing was tweaked when the Victorians started mass-producing footwear. The rival continental system was drawn up by French shoemakers in Napoleonic times.
‘They are based on the Paris Point — a long, straight stitch probably used to sew shoes together,’ says Shawcross.
Yet even though the old British fitting is more precise — and better for our feet — Laura West, of the Society of Shoe Fitters, says it is losing out to cheap imports.
‘European sizing is overtaking English sizing because our system is unique — and it is cheaper for manufacturers to churn out millions of shoes of a reasonably standard size,’ she says.
WHAT HAPPENED TO BRITISH HALF-SIZES?
MANY of us will remember getting our feet measured with an oldfashioned metal device when we were children.
Katie owen, founder of Sargasso & Grey, which specialises in shoes for women with wider feet, says: ‘Half-sizes are fading out because fewer brands make them and High Street stores don’t have the room for those in between.
‘So women end up having to go up or down half a size and buy shoes that either squeeze their feet or make their feet feel as if they are swimming.’
Podiatrist Lorraine Jones says losing half-sizes is also bad news, as research has found six out of ten of us have one foot bigger than the other. ‘It’s very common, and if you can’t get a half-size it’s essential that you buy for the larger foot so it does not get damaged by being constrained.’
WHY ARE IMPORTED SHOES SO NARROW?
WHEN we think about national differences, we tend to think about language and cuisine. But according to shoe experts, foot shape varies according to what part of the world we come from.
The footwear different countries produce is based on the shoe lasts — or wooden moulds — that were used by their shoe industry.
Sarah Watkinson-Yull, of Yull Shoes, one of the few independent shoe brands that still designs and manufactures shoes in the UK, says: ‘Italian lasts are very narrow while Spanish lasts are wider.’
In a recent survey of 900 British women by Sargasso & Grey, more than half said they can’t find wide enough shoes. Fitting expert Laura West thinks our wider foot shape may date back to our Celtic origins. ‘our foot shape is more similar to that of the Germans and Scandinavians. But they’re naturally taller so their feet tend to be longer than ours,’ she says.
‘The taller you are, the more the bone size in your feet needs to increase to hold you up.’
The fact that many of our shoes are imported from China — where women tend to be shorter with smaller feet — may also mean many cheaper High Street imports are being made on slightly smaller shoe lasts, says West.
And there is one more reason UK women may need wider shoes: our weight. West says: ‘We have become more obese as a society and the consequence is that our feet get flaccid and wider.’
Katie owen says: ‘English shoes are no longer bespoke for our population, as not many women’s shoes are manufacturing here.
‘once shoes were made to fit the women of each country. Now it’s much more one-size-fits-all.
‘The difference between width sizes, which go from A to E, is only a matter of millimetres, but it can make all the difference if a shoe is pinching or rubbing.’
WHEN SIZING IS JUST A ROUGH GUIDE
WHEN I looked for my size — a typical British seven — I found High Street chains offered conflicting advice about how to translate UK sizes into continental ones.
There is no industry standardisation — and it’s left very much to the manufacturers and retailers. I also found most shoes bought off the shelf on the High Street were standard width.
When it came to length, the Next store told me I should pick a European size 41. Kurt Geiger advised a 40. To see if the sizes really varied, I used a ruler to measure a range of supposed sizeseven ballet flats bought on the High Street.
A Gap shoe, which I assumed would fit me, said it was a European 40, and gave no British size. It measured 26.5 cm from the tip to the toe.
A Primark pair, marked as a British seven and a European 40/41, was the same length.
But a Sports Direct pair, which was marked as a seven and a 40, was half a centimetre shorter and compressed my toes.
It seems the size number on the soles should only be treated as the roughest of guides.
Laura West says: ‘To avoid confusion, the only solution is to get your feet professionally fitted. These days, that can primarily be done by independent retailers.’
ILL-FITTING SHOES ARE AGEING . . .
MoRE than half of women admit choosing fashion over fit when they buy shoes — leading to unsightly problems such as corns, calluses and bunions.
Shoes that are too big can also make the toes curl over as they try to grip and become clawed. Furthermore, badly fitting shoes can make the toe nails thicken and yellow with age.
Podiatrist Lorraine Jones says: ‘When you’re younger, the nail plate is translucent and looks pink because of the blood-infused nail bed underneath.
‘But if the nails are often jammed tight or hit against the end of a shoe, the nail bed becomes thicker. It then becomes less seethrough and more yellow.’
. . . AND CAN WRECK YOUR HEALTH
BADLY fitting shoes can also affect your long-term health.
If your feet hurt, you adjust your body to take the pressure off them.
That has a knock-on effect because walking unnaturally causes wear and tear to the joints in other parts of your body, such as your ankles, knees and hips.
‘Shoes are looked at as a fashion item instead of something that will enable your feet to function, and these are two very different things,’ says Jones.
‘In women, these issues will make any arthritic changes worse as you get older.’
Ill-fitting shoes are a particular risk for diabetic women who have trouble controlling their blood sugar levels. As many as one in five people in their 50s have type one or two diabetes; the figure rises above a quarter for those in their 60s.
The condition causes damage to the tissues, leading to loss of feeling in the toes.
This can prevent you from noticing corns or blisters, meaning your feet can become ulcerated, creating the risk of infection and — as extreme as it sounds — even amputation.