It’s not easy being a woman and having long or wide feet – or heaven forefend both! But it’s not as hard as it once was to find women’s shoes in larger sizes or widths, if you know which shops to go to and what to look out for.
Larger shoes for women are easily found on the internet; Long Tall Sally’s website, and tallgirls.com have plenty of shoes in larger sizes, and they adhere to current trends. You don’t need to feel confined to only ugly or outdated shoes at all. Marisota equally caters for the larger-footed woman, and also stocks shoes in regular sizes for wider feet. Perhaps more impressively, they also keep shoes in larger sizes for narrower feet – which can be very hard to find, as many manufacturers seem to think a longer foot is, by necessity, a wider foot as well. The downside of all of these shops is the price; you can end up seriously over budget. Marisota is the least expensive of the three, so they may well be the first shop you check out.
The problem with buying shoes online is of course the fact that you can’t try them on. Trying shoes on is essential to buying them, as you simply can’t tell from looking at a shoe whether it will be comfortable. I can vouch for this, having gotten married in shoes that looked like perfectly innocuous flats but felt like they were twisting my feet. I didn’t even have to stand – just sitting with my feet in the shoes, even if they weren’t touching the floor, made my feet hurt immensely.
For that reason, if you do feel you should buy shoes online, make sure you read the return policy through and that you will be able to return or exchange them if they aren’t satisfactory.
Long Tall Sally do have physical shops you can go to, so that is always an option. Unfortunately some of the shops are
quite small and carry a proportionate amount of stock, leaving you unable to find a large selection of shoes to try on.
Evans present another option, with shoes in a wide variety of sizes provided in a number of high-street shops and allowing you to try on every pair of shoes your heart desires. The downside here is that all their shoes are wide-fitting, which leaves those of us with a narrow foot uncatered-for. They do have a lovely sense of style and tend to be able to provide both on- and off-trend beauties for a selection of budgets.
Buying women’s shoes for larger feet hasn’t yet become a walk in the park, but it is no longer the impossible task it once was. And ultimately, you can do a lot of window-shopping, which is at least half the fun!
