Dear Shoe Lady,

I have always had big feet.  I passed my grandmother’s size 7 at an early age and flew by my mother’s size 9 in fourth grade.  Finding shoes growing up was always a problem because anything my mother could find in my size she felt looked way too “grown up” for me. By the time I reached junior high I had hit size 10, and they very difficult to locate in our area.  Many times I would walk into a store to ask if they had anything in my size and was turned away because they had nothing.

I have lost count of the times I actually found a pair only to try them on and find out they didn’t fit and of the many looks on the faces of salesclerks and even rude comments when I declared they were too small.  As hard as it was to find shoes there was still a part of me that would get excited when I finally found a size 10, fleetingly hoping it would actually fit, an inner sigh of disappointment when they did not.

It has grown much easier to find size 10, 11 and even larger in my area, but never a half size.  I still try on tons of shoes to find a 10 that runs big or an 11 that runs small.  When I do find something I hang on to it and take care of them, wearing them as long as possible and sometimes even buy additional pairs.

It seems I have short toes (or at least the ball of my foot is always closer to the toe than where the ball of the shoe lies) along with an unusual size of 10.5 which makes it very difficult to find the right fit.

Would you have any recommendations on shoes for me?

Deb

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Dear Deb,

the 10.5M shoe size problem is not so hard.  Today DesignerShoes.com has 752 women’s shoe  styles available in size 10.5.  But, alas, the short toes are more of a challenge.  Shoes are actually designed and sized based on the distance between the ball of the foot and the heel.  So if you have short toes and you buy your shoes by toe to heel length, the outward curve of the shoe where the ball of your foot should be will always hit your foot in the wrong spot, making the shoe feel strange.  Your best bet for this is to look for styles that don’t taper in too much at the toe box.  Look for a rounder or square toe box shape.