What Shoes Size Is...?

Often our customers in our shoe store in Florence or via email ask us whats shoe size they need with Italian shoes. It is not a question easy to answer.

Trying to answer this question we have provided here a table of our creation to compare for the size of UK shoes, US shoes and Italian shoes.

However, a premise is necessary: ​​there is no perfect match between the various measurement scales!

Answering the question "what shoe size should I buy" is not easy, we need to ask many questions and consider different factors.

All this for a series of reasons that I'm going to list:

1. the measurement depends on the shape of the shoe and the shape of the foot. Example: a pointed shoe and a wide foot will certainly want a size over the usual one. It is therefore necessary to consider the shape of one's foot, in particular, if the shape is wide or if it is a thin foot; if you have Venus finger, if you have hallux valgus, high neck of foot, and so on. These are all physical characteristics of the foot that can influence which shoe size you need to choose. The same applies to shoes, if they are rounded at the top, or if they have a very loose shape; if they have a zipper or are simply "pull on"; whether they have a generous wear or not.
   
   
2. every shoe factory has different size. There is no international agreement in the world of shoes. There is not even the same difference between one size and another. For example, usually the Italian numbers have "steps" of half a centimeter: a 37 is usually a foot of 24.5 cm while a 38 is about 25 cm. The English sizes instead have smaller variations, of about 35 millimeters, so there absolutely cannot be a perfect match with the Italian measures. Different systems with different criteria at the base.
   If we think that many Italian shoe companies create their own shoes shapes, we can understand that how each brand has its own size scale and value. Not only. between the shoes of the same brand, there can be difference: we can have a model that "wears big" and a model that on the contrary "wears small".
   
   
3. the various international codes of shoe sizes do not match. They cannot. just give it up.
   You can check it out by searching on Google Images "converting shoes sizes" and see how many tables come out. All different from each other. Good luck.
   Why this chaos? partially, this is due to the reasons explained in point 1. it is the scale of measurement units that change.
   
   
4. even our foot changes! It is very frequent during our life to increase or decrease a size or two or three.
   The average trend is to earn one more size, but there are also those who lose it.
   So please do be fixated on a certain size "because you've always had that size", it is an assumption that does not really make sense.

How can you solve the question of what shoe size you are? Simple: rely on our experience. We will be able to advise you on the right size. It is our job, after all