I blame Cinderella for triggering my biggest body insecurity. She made dainty feet desirable way back in the 17th century – and here I am, 400 years later, loathing my size 8 (OK, maybe 9) clodhoppers.
I’m not alone.
Elle Macpherson (size 10), Kate Winslet (size 9) and Audrey Hepburn (size 8) have all reported feelings of hatred towards their hooves.
For me, it’s been a pain point (literally and metaphorically) since I was in primary school. Getting school shoes required traipsing around the whole of Birmingham, from Clarks to Start-Rite to Dolcis via Barratts and Saxone in the hope of finding a pair that fitted. When we did, they were always, always aesthetically unappealing. My mother forced me to wear the ones in my size, but once I had autonomy over my footwear purchases, I rammed them into too-small shoes because they were easier to find and looked way better. This means I have suffered almost four decades of blisters, sores and numbness. I have limped, I have bled, I have walked home barefoot post party in the dead of winter through jettisoned hypodermics and broken glass, because that was preferable to wearing my skin-lacerating shoes.
In the 1930s, they were never too big for their boots.
Peak discomfort arrived during the glossy magazine days in my 20s where the shoe samples we 'borrowed' were a size 6. No one was going to get between me and a free pair of Pradas. I know, I know, it was all so self-inflicted.
I reached my nadir in Paris. Desperate to have a FROW-acceptable pair of shoes, I wandered into a designer store with my first big pay cheque and enquired if I could try a style on in my size. The shop assistant looked horrified, verging on repulsed, then gathered her colleagues round to marvel at my enormous pop-socked foot.
Then something even worse happened. At the age of 30 my feet grew one whole size. This was down to pregnancy. Thanks to a surge of the relaxin hormone and the extra weight, my arches flattened and when my baby boy emerged, I found myself with a whole bunch of shoes that I would never fit into again.
I briefly toyed with the idea of foot surgery. I’d heard New Yorkers were having operations to narrow and shorten their feet to fit into their Manolos – but decided against it, as it was a) ridiculous and b) ridiculous.
Strangely there aren’t many studies into whether the nation's feet are getting bigger, but a poll by the College of Podiatry back in 2014 reported British feet were getting larger and wider – with the average woman’s size going from a 4 to a 6 as we’ve got taller and weightier. Since then, I’m guessing feet have only grown, yet still it’s a struggle to find decent women’s shoes in an 8 and above. The advent of online shopping helps a little, but set the filters to bigger sizes and the offerings are still meagre.
I talk to Laura Schofield, founder of Otto + Ivy, a company whose mission is to deliver larger shoes that flatter and fit. Her styles are beloved by Alison Hammond, Angela Griffin, Gemma Collins, Caroline Hirons and Caitlyn Jenner. The latter, upon trying them on, said they gave her a ‘Cinderella moment’.
Kate Winslet wears a size 9
Laura is the font of all knowledge on larger shoes. The former TV presenter on shopping channel TJC is an owner of size 9s herself and so she knows the pain and disappointment that comes with ownership of an outsize foot. She discovered she was not alone when, in 2010, she created a blog called All The Tall Things and found a community of equally frustrated women. In 2020 she launched Otto + Ivy.
I ask her why most high street stores stop at a 41 (size 7 and a half), because to the outsider it feels it would be easy for them to just scale up. ‘The short answer is it costs more to create larger sizes. They require more materials, incur higher shipping costs and sometimes require expensive specialised tools or moulds to manufacture them. And because retailers need to price all sizes equally, the higher cost of producing larger sizes would drive up the price of their smaller, more popular sizes too — making them less competitive – so they just don’t do it.’
She tells me her larger shoes require careful design because many of those blessed with bigger feet are self-conscious about it. ‘Designing flattering shoes for women with longer feet is an art form. Most tall women don’t like sky-high heels, yet a frustrating truth is that high heels make feet look shorter. A low heel on a size 11 foot can look completely different to a low heel on a size 5 foot. This means the proportions must be perfect, or the shoe risks looking clunky, or just not right. We work incredibly hard to strike that balance, and use lots of clever techniques (panelling, additional seams, embellishments), to make them look flattering.’
Then we get on to sizing. ‘It’s a minefield because in the UK and EU it goes wildly out of sync as shoe sizes get larger.’ She explains this is because European sizes go up by 6.66 mm as you rise upwards whereas UK and US sizes increase by 8.46mmm, ‘so by the time they get to the larger sizes the disparity is huge. This means while online shoe shopping is usually pretty low risk for smaller-footed people, it can be a bit of a minefield for us.’ The upshot is even though she’s a British firm, Laura works with European sizes because she feels they are more accurate.
I don’t really know my size because a) who gets their feet measured as an adult? And b) there is no standardised size guide that retailers subscribe to, but I consider myself a UK size 8, the equivalent of an EU 42. Laura believes I am right that an 8 = 42. So do Marks & Spencer and Clarks. But many brands have surreptitiously downshifted their sizes to look more inclusive. Sézane says 8 is a 41. So does J Crew. And Zara. The above brands do at least run to a 43. As do designer labels Jimmy Choo, Aquazurra and Stuart Weitzman. At size 44 Laura says your options fall off a cliff.
I have always searched on mainstream websites for shoes rather than with specialist retailers because I didn’t want to feel abnormal or outsize. But ordering and wearing a pair of Otto + Ivy Zahlia boots has made me realise that this is foolish. The only person I was hurting with that behaviour was me. Revelation: these boots fit! No pinching. No rubbing and no cramping. And their clever design makes my legs look elegant and my feet look neat. Reader, they are the holy grail.
