Wide Width Shoes - Finding And Fitting

Finding wide shoes, particularly women’s wide width shoes, used to be a problem if you lived anywhere other than near a big city. Even then, a trip to the specialty shoe store, which was always located clear across town, was an afternoon event.

Online shopping has changed all that. Even wide width dress shoes are available somewhere on the internet, and in all shapes, colors, and designs. Prices still tend to be somewhat higher than the same style shoe in the more common sizes, but that gap is narrowing as worldwide demand is providing the incentive for international shoe manufacturers to produce more wide width shoes for men and women in every fashion line.

Here is the rub. Although you can buy wide shoes, or even extra wide shoes, from dozens of international shoe stores, shoe sizes are not standardized across the globe. For example, if a woman’s foot measures exactly 10 inches (25.4 cm) in length her shoe size in the USA and Canada is 9. Her shoe size is 6 ½ in the U.K, but her shoe size is 40 in the rest of Europe. For Mexican manufacturers her shoe size is 6.

The international websites you shop for man wide shoes or women’s wide shoes may be written in English but they may be speaking an entirely different language when it comes to shoe size. You can see what might happen if you just ordered size 10 EEE pumps from Malaysia without doing more checking. Is there a way out of this mess?  

One way to solve the problem is to measure the length of your feet. Place two pieces of blank paper flush against the wall and stand on them in bare feet with your heels also flush against the wall. Draw a line on the paper at the point of your longest toe on each foot. One foot (usually the opposite side of your handedness) will be longer than the other. Use the longer measurement for your foot length.

While still standing, measure the width of each foot at its widest point. Use the greater measurement as your foot width. If you measured in inches then multiply your measurements by 2.54 to convert them to centimeters. 10 inches = 25.4 cm. The metric measurements will come in handy when communicating with non-US shoe stores. Doing the metric conversion yourself eliminates one possible source of error. If you are more adventurous you can try this comparative shoe size chart.

Now, armed with your precision foot measurements in both inches and centimeters you can have the shoe store in Kuala Lampur measure the inside dimensions of those stylish pumps to be sure they will fit you comfortably.

As a general rule, shoes manufactured from natural leather will eventually conform better to your foot shape than synthetics. If given the choice always go with the leather, especially with wide width dress shoes.

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