Shoe size shambles

[danny la rouge]

I remember a shoe fitting x-Ray machine in Stirling when I was a kid. I think it was Clark’s. My Mum would check my feet there then go and buy shoes somewhere cheaper.

I may be misremembering, but I think the idea was that the scope at the top gave you a view of your feet inside the shoes. It was in any case a big wooden thing and you inserted your feet at the bottom and then your Mum and the shop staff would take turns at peering into a viewer at the top.

One of those “they did what?” moments of a 60s childhood.

 

[Pickman's model]

medium - spirit

please yourselves

 

[MrSki]

Cinderella syndrome.

Why if Cinderella's slipper/shoe fitted so well did it fall off in the first place?

 

[danny la rouge]

Why if Cinderella's slipper/shoe fitted so well did it fall off in the first place?

Glass is slidey.

 

[bimble]

Glass is slidey.

Especially when you have sweaty feet from all the waltzing, and they were slippers.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

medium - spirit

please yourselves

A happy medium

 

[JimW]

Trick is to get two basins, one larger than the other, fill the smaller to the brim and place it inside the larger. Then you put your foot in the water and what spills over into the larger basin can be boiled to give an exact measure of your foot in joules and make a nice cup of tea.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

You speak volumes

 

[hash tag]

Why if Cinderella's slipper/shoe fitted so well did it fall off in the first place?

Pissed. Or a typical man stood on it while dancing

 

[petee]

i've always loved these, and still insist on checking whenever i buy new shoes (about once every 3 years anymore).

Brannock Device - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[bimble]

that is a beautiful thing.

 

[hash tag]

But, do you always get measured after lots of exercise or no exercise and do you do the same thing every time?

 

[teuchter]

A shoe designed with sufficient average height for a given size and material stretching tollerances should allow for natural foot rotation. Thus it's not something requiring a specific measure...

pinkmonkey is the expert on this I reckon. She designs shoes IIRC.

No, i mean the rotation of the foot relative to the parallel blocks in the measuring device you mention. This will affect the measured length.

 

[pinkmonkey]

Maybe it is the same thing as with women’s clothes sizes - vanity sizing (women feel happier if the jeans that fit say a small size number on them so if you want to sell more clothes to silly people label the size 14s as size 10 etc), which is the main reason women’s clothes sizes have no real meaning.
Maybe it’s like that, because some shops cater for the kind of men who want to be flattered into thinking they require a large shoe size.

It depends on your target market - for an older customer, the standard fit might be wider - if I'm working on womens shoes for over 40's then I'd advise they do a D fitting. The stick length (your shoe size) those measurements have never changed. But depending on the design of the shoe, even if the stick length is the same it might feel like different size, also depending on the shape of your feet, too. It's true that some of the different size guages don't convert evently, though, but that's the footwear technolgists job to decide that with my client. We use fit models - people with standard fittings and we fit every size on them. But one shoe style will never ever fit the same as another, especially in womens footwear - toe shapes really affect the fitting, a severe point is always going to feel a bit tight. Materials used will affect the fit - real leather is better than imitation as it stretches, unless it's patent leather, which doesn't stretch.
I do use standards for designing, back heights for shoes and boots, calf widths, I use standard fits, but feet are not standard fits. If you're struggling to get anything to fit, visit a podiatrist and get measured properly. Some of the chains use their own standards. One of my clients was complaining to me that the technologist at a well known chainstore insisted that everyone had to buy a silicone model foot costing £300 and all shoes had to be fitted on that or he'd not sign them off for production. It was a cast of his wifes foot, he'd decided she had the perfect feet. Sounds a bit weird to me.

 

[bimble]

pinkmonkey how is a stick length defined just by length?

 

[pinkmonkey]

No, i mean the rotation of the foot relative to the parallel blocks in the measuring device you mention. This will affect the measured length.

When my last maker does bespoke fitting lasts - he has that oasis foam, you know like florists use - he gets the client to stand in a block of that. He then also takes lots of measurements - joint girth, instep girth, ball girth as well as the length.

 

[pinkmonkey]

pinkmonkey how is a stick length defined just by length?

This is a good description of how to do it HealthyFeetStore.com and another one, this is how the technologist does it How to Correctly Measure Your Feet any device or blocks of wood are a gimmick, you can now even get ipad apps, that scan your feet, but they're just not as good as paper, pencil and tape measure - everyone I know who works in fitting or bespoke confirmed this to me, there's no replacement for it.

 

[Pickman's model]

i've always loved these, and still insist on checking whenever i buy new shoes (about once every 3 years anymore).

Brannock Device - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

used to have my feet measured in one of them when i was little. don't think i've seen one since i was eight

 

[petee]

used to have my feet measured in one of them when i was little. don't think i've seen one since i was eight

my foot is EEEEE/special order so i need to go to srs shoe store.

 

[bimble]

This is a good description of how to do it HealthyFeetStore.com and another one, this is how the technologist does it How to Correctly Measure Your Feet any device or blocks of wood are a gimmick, you can now even get ipad apps, that scan your feet, but they're just not as good as paper, pencil and tape measure - everyone I know who works in fitting or bespoke confirmed this to me, there's no replacement for it.

"
Using the ruler, measure the distance from the very bottom of the heel to the top of the longest toe. To be accurate subtract 0.20 to 0.25 inches from the measurement, to account for the diameter of the pencil."

Well there you go, so it is as the crow flies, the diagonal length of your foot. That is probably the only thing that i've learnt today.

 

[teuchter]

This is a good description of how to do it HealthyFeetStore.com and another one, this is how the technologist does it How to Correctly Measure Your Feet any device or blocks of wood are a gimmick, you can now even get ipad apps, that scan your feet, but they're just not as good as paper, pencil and tape measure - everyone I know who works in fitting or bespoke confirmed this to me, there's no replacement for it.

Those two sources come up with a different shoe size based on the same length. For a 26cm length, one says that's a UK size 7 and the other says it's somewhere between an 8 and an 8.5.

 

[Pickman's model]

Those two sources come up with a different shoe size based on the same length. For a 26cm length, one says that's a UK size 7 and the other says it's somewhere between an 8 and an 8.5.

so what you do is to try the shoe on to see if the damn thing fits

 

[teuchter]

so what you do is to try the shoe on to see if the damn thing fits

So if you were prime minister, we'd abolish shoe sizes (and you'd probably ban measuring tapes too) and just shout at people to try on a random selection of shoes until they found one that fitted.

 

[Saul Goodman]

So if you were prime minister, we'd abolish shoe sizes (and you'd probably ban measuring tapes too) and just shout at people to try on a random selection of shoes until they found one that fitted.

And silly threads.

Everyone's feet are different. Try on shoes until you find one that fits, then try on the other one, just to be sure.

 

[Pickman's model]

So if you were prime minister, we'd abolish shoe sizes (and you'd probably ban measuring tapes too) and just shout at people to try on a random selection of shoes until they found one that fitted.

if i was prime minister, you would abolish shoe sizes? why would you abolish shoe sizes?

 

[Pickman's model]

And silly threads.

i like silly threads. but if i was prime minister i'd work day and night to abolish shitty threads.

 

[pinkmonkey]

Those two sources come up with a different shoe size based on the same length. For a 26cm length, one says that's a UK size 7 and the other says it's somewhere between an 8 and an 8.5.

26cm would normally be a UK 7. But try another way - have you got any shoes that fit you at the moment? Can you pull the insole out and measure the stick length? The lengthiest part? I've just found the fitting guide my technologist sent me.

 

[teuchter]

26cm would normally be a UK 7. But try another way - have you got any shoes that fit you at the moment? Can you pull the insole out and measure the stick length? The lengthiest part? I've just found the fitting guide my technologist sent me.

I'm sure I could - and it would probably be different in different shoes. But even if I found a totally consistent length, it would be little use to me in determining the size most likely to fit, when ordering something online, say. Some of the thread's more fascistic contributors don't think such a thing should be allowed, of course - we must go to a local shop, find the nearest thing to what we need, even if it's barely similar to what we need, and try on a few sizes of it, and catch covid while we're at it.

Anyway, one approach to buying online would be to find somewhere that did returns, and order, say, the most likely size, plus one size above and below that. But in trying to determine the "in theory most likely" size, I already come up with a range that spans 7 different half-sizes.

 

[teuchter]

26cm would normally be a UK 7.

Is that based on an agreed standard that's set out somewhere?

 

[pinkmonkey]

Is that based on an agreed standard that's set out somewhere?

Its in 3 different standards docs Ive got for different retailers, but you have to bear in mind that the stick length has a range of about 15mm to allow for the different toe shapes -it‘s an unprecise precise measurement and the only way we really know what the size should be is to make that design then try them on fit models.