Q: I hate it when I go shoe shopping and they never have my size. But then shoe clerks try to get me to buy something in a different size. What’s up with this?
Cindy, Radnor, PA
A: Never buy shoes that don’t fit your feet. But don’t limit yourself to believing you can only wear one size, either. Sometimes the shoe is accidentally shaped so that runs large or small, narrow or wide. The shoe clerk will know this and bring you out a size that is most likely to fit. Women with less common sized feet may never have had an opportunity to try on enough correctly fitting shoes to even know their true size. Last week a woman in our store, DesignerShoes.com, came in looking for 11.5M shoes. It turned out that the 9WW shoes fit her the best.
There is a lot to consider in finding the right shoes. Fitting shoes means getting a given mass (your foot!) into a given size container (the shoe!). Your foot can be more or less flexible. Alice has softer, fleshy feet. Not fat, just genetics. Joyce’s feet are just bone and raw nerve endings. Alice can fit her foot comfortably into shoes ranging from 8WW (extra wide) to 10AA (narrow) depending on the shape of the shoe. Joyce is almost always a 9AAA (slim) and less than half of those fit her comfortably because of the specific shape of her foot.
If you do need those rare sizes, wides, shoes above size 10, narrows, etc. – shopping online is a good idea, once you have a good sense of your shoe size, or size range. Check out search engines like www.google.com. Search by key words like “wide shoes” or “shoes for tall women. For over 50 sizes and widths and 30 brand name designers, visit the online shoe store.
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