Do you have these in a 42?’ Is it my imagination or is the assistant rolling her eyes. ‘I can look in the back,’ she says, ‘But we don’t have capacity to carry every size in store. Have you tried online?’
‘I was really hoping to try the boots on in the shop,’ I say. ‘To get a feel for the fit. Could you have a look?’ I’m trying to be polite. I’ve worked in retail, and I know it’s tough. The shop assistant might be near the end of a long shift, and she might have had a tough day.
And yet she doesn’t know what it’s like to plod through the world with size 9 feet. She’s wearing the shoes in the window, beautiful green velvet flats with a sparkling buckle.
I suspect she might have got a job in this shop because she loves shoes. It’s easy to love shoes if you know that you can walk into any shop, anywhere, and find a pair that will fit well.
The assistant comes back, empty handed. She shrugs. ‘No, we don’t have them. Try online. Or maybe a specialist shop?’
‘Thanks,’ I say, avoiding her eyes.
This is ridiculous. I’m almost 40, and I want to cry. A specialist shop? I feel like a freak. A freak with size 9 feet.
Even though I don’t want to give the shop any more custom, I love the boots. I have a look online later. They’re available in a European 42 and 43, UK women’s size 9 and 10, but both sizes have sold out.
Clearly, I’m not a freak. There must be quite a lot of women like me. Women with money to spend who are poorly served by the major brands when it comes to shoes.
Women who end up wearing plain boots, or men’s trainers, or footwear that always feels like a compromise in terms of aesthetics and comfort.
Women who have felt excluded from the ultra-feminine shoe fantasy, who grew up wishing that, just once, they could be Cinderella or Carrie Bradshaw.
Or women who wish, most of all, that buying shoes that fit didn’t come with drama, uncertainty and waiting for refunds. Women who wish that they didn’t really have to think about shoes so much at all.
Over the course of my life, my relationship with my body has changed. My weight has fluctuated. I’ve been a dress size 8, and an 18. Now a size 12, I can walk into any clothes shop and find an outfit that fits, but I don’t take it for granted because it hasn’t always been the case.
I’ve also noticed a shift. Shops and brands are rightly responding to consumer pressure and requests for a wider range of clothing sizes. Theoretically, most of us should now be able to walk into any high street shop and find a pair of jeans or a dress that fits.
But this size-inclusive revolution seems to have stopped at the ankle. Put me in any shoe shop, and I’m 14 again, weeping over a pair of jeans in the Topshop changing room.
No matter what size or shape the rest of my body is, my feet remain the same, a wide size 9, and I am still made to feel shame because of it.
Our feet are definitely getting bigger. In 2014, the College of Podiatry found in Britain the average foot had increased by two sizes over the past four decades.
I’ve heard people talk about how their feet went up a size after spending a summer in unstructured shoes, such as Crocs or Birkenstocks, and it’s a well-known fact that feet can get wider post-menopause when a loss of collagen causes a sagging of the arches. So there’s that to look forward to as well.
Why aren’t retailers responding to demand? Former luxury shoe buyer Naomi Braithwaite told the BBC 65 per cent of shoes are manufactured in China, where the average shoe size is 3.5.
She added: ‘Chinese feet are smaller boned and narrower… [and] many of the designers at the luxury end simply didn’t like to see their shoes in bigger sizes as they didn’t think they looked as beautiful as more petite sizes.’
I talked to Laura Schofield, the founder of Otto and Ivy, a brand that sells footwear exclusively in a size 42 and above.
She explained that some of the problem is partly down to the fact that shoes are manufactured all over the world, and sizing isn’t standardised.
‘There isn’t a globalised measurement system,’ she told me. ‘And the issue for manufacturers and retailers when trying to convert EU sizes to UK or US, is that it’s a bit like comparing centimetres and inches.
‘The scales are misaligned. There are 6.66mm between each European size, and 8.46mm between each UK or US size. That conversion becomes even more inaccurate the bigger your shoe size.’
There’s confusion between Chinese sizing, British sizing and European sizing, too, which means an inconsistency between brands. According to shoe brand Sargasso & Grey, a UK 7 is a European 40, but in China, a shoe with the same measurements is labelled as a 41. This might be why I can occasionally find a size 8 – or 41 – that fits, if it’s been manufactured in Europe.
However, even high-end manufacturers are overwhelmingly choosing to use factories in China, to keep costs down.
This often means women like me are out of luck – we wonder how on Earth our feet can be getting bigger, when the truth is that the shoes themselves are getting smaller. But even if I can find a pair of shoes in my size, I can rarely find a pair I really like because the choice is so limited.
As an experiment, I just looked at Dune London’s website and found 616 styles available in a size 6 – and only 19 available in a size 9. And one of the results is just a pair of insoles.
For a long time, my shoe shopping strategy was to embrace the two Ds. Discomfort and denial. If I wanted a party shoe, it had to be a strappy sandal, which allowed room for my foot to hang over the edges.
As long as I could prop myself in a corner for the duration, and didn’t try to do anything too wild, like walking or dancing, all was well. There are too many pictures of me as a student, ‘excessively refreshed’ and holding a pair of heels that had become unwearably painful.
In my 20s, when I was on a budget, I had very low standards for my wardrobe. I didn’t think about comfort or quality – I was a fast fashion addict.
But as I’ve got older, my attitude has shifted. I want sustainable pieces that have been well made and, crucially, fit me. And when it comes to shoes, it’s almost impossible to find places that cater for me.
Online, I love Otto and Ivy, Laura Schofield’s fantastic e-store for those of us with feet that are size 42 and up.
Laura, a size 43, created the brand because she was so frustrated about the lack of options available to her.
Other brands I love include Air & Grace, and Esska, and they both carry most styles up to a size 43. But buying shoes online isn’t a seamless or straightforward process. I’m never completely confident about what will fit, and it’s not possible to try before you buy.
I don’t look forward to shoe shopping. I’d rather spend an hour at the dentist, having my gums blasted with a water jet and my flossing technique criticised, than spend an afternoon searching for a pair of shoes that I might be excited to buy. It’s hard to find anything that looks good, and it’s almost impossible to find anything that feels good too.
For my sister’s wedding last year, I dreamt of finding a beautiful, well-fitting pair of heels that I could walk and maybe even dance in. The reality was rather different: I wore my trusty gold strappy sandals for the photos and popped on my trainers before the speeches started.
We all know Cinderella’s story, but I often think of the ugly sisters, trying to force their feet into the famous beautiful glass slipper that was far too small.
As young girls, we grow up being told that tiny feet are feminine. If we’ve got bigger feet, like the ugly sisters, we don’t deserve beautiful shoes. I’d like to change that storyline. I don’t even want to meet Prince Charming – but I’d marry the DPD man if he knocked at my door and delivered a perfect pair of party heels in a size 9.
- Read Yourself Happy: How to Use Books to Ease Your Anxiety by Daisy Buchanan is out now