Mainstream women's shoes only going up to a size 8

Foot sisters! Haha! Definitely with you all on this!

trainers, slippers and wellies are all fine..anything else is hit and miss!

I have found my foot sisters!!

thanks for the post @AlwaysFreezing

I’m a proper 9/43 and wide to boot.

Next used to be fabulous but seem to be dropping a lot of the wide ranges and less 9s actually in stock now.

Hotter, Riker and sketchers are my go to brands. Few converse as well.

some of the US brands are good and go up
High enough.

In my twenties I used to be about a size 5 and now in my thirties I'm a size 7.5 sucks as some really nice shoes never come up in my size.

I was a size 8 in 1971 when I was 11. The only shoes I had a "choice" of were granny ones (not even my mum would wear them) or boys. You can imagine how much fun that was! I am now in my 60s and a size 9. Deichmann are good but pot luck if they have any left after the first 2 days, I've given up and wear mens a lot of the time. Particularly trainers.

@TheBitterBoy , the first column is american, 2nd on EU, 3rd one UK, 4th on Inches, 5th one cm

10 40-41 8 10.1875" 25.9

Yeah, DD2 is a size 9 aged 14, also very tall. I think her feet have stopped growing. Fortunately at the moment she is a trainer fan so we can get men's. But for sandals we have to buy online and the quality isn't always great. Her generation's feet are big and it's weird that shops don't appear to have noticed.

Even DD1 (18) has size 7 feet though is only 5'4". Her feet are bigger than mine and I'm 5'7".

How odd. I am a size 4 and never have trouble finding a size 4

That chart is American, and is categorically wrong. I am a size 41, which in the UK these days usually means I buy an 8, or if available a 7.5

Please share!

I have long, narrow feet (size 9) but also slender ankles and long, narrow calves and it's almost impossible to find close-fitting long-boots.

I'm a 9 and I'm sure sizes have got smaller - as others have said the conversion of British to continental sizes have scaled down the half sizes, not up.

Compounded by my feet spreading as I've got older/put a bit of weight on and I really struggle to find nice 9s, not ugly, mannish things.

@Tippexy , how are the M&S sizes different?

9 is 41 or 42.
I'm usually a 5 but depending on the shoe I might be a 4 or a 6.

Read more at: https://www.shoesizingcharts.com/

I used to be a footwear buyer for a brand mentioned on this thread.

The factories were exclusively women's shoe makers and did not have a size 43. And when we did pay them to develop a 43, and we stocked our 60 or so lines in size 43, we sold one or two in maybe 20 of the styles, leaving us with a big stock to try and flog in the sale. So we tried to stock maybe half the lines in a 43 and got complaints that it was discriminatory just to do the more boring styles in a 10.

Essentially we lost money on both the size 43s and the size 35s (2). It is easier to not do them.

As it is those sizes always end up in the sale - if you’re a middle size like 5 you never get shoes in the sale.

My memory is of there being racks and racks of sale shoes in size 6 and below and one single rack for 7 and above.

Well of course it is. However, many women are taller and have larger feet than they did a generation or so ago. It doesn’t hide the fact that it is a large size. I would imagine that the average size today is probably size 6. My adult daughter takes size 2, which can be problematic at the other end of the spectrum.

Not as clear cut as that. An old-style 8 came out as 41.5. Most shops initially (Clarks, Jones, M&S, Gabor) had 40 as a 7, 41 as a 7.5 and 8 as a 42. But then a lot of cheaper styles didn’t want to bother with a half size. Then Jones “re-sized” 15 years ago or so.

Kind of not kind off

PS my very close female friend is a 13 so not saying it isn’t shitty!

Absolutely not helpful but just to illustrate the attitude to larger feet, I am a size 8 but went up half a size after each pregnancy and spent a good few years as a size 9. I went to a v. posh Country Living Show in London with my mum, and said to her in a crowd of people 'I just want to look at those shoes as they go up to a size 10.' 2 women in front of us looked at each other wide eyed, pulled a horrified face and burst out laughing and I've been self conscious about my feet ever since. It's not fair as I'm 5ft 9 and would topple over in a strong wind if they were much smaller. Just because I have big feet it does not mean I don't like pretty shoes FFS! Anyway, my go to is Fairfax and Favour as they have size 9 shoes to die for!

I guess it’s a profit thing? They don’t go above an 8 or below a 3 - kind off comparable sizes in terms of distance from the average which I think is 5.5 - because there aren’t enough people at those sizes to make the profit they want?

As it is those sizes always end up in the sale - if you’re a middle size like 5 you never get shoes in the sale.

Obviously you need to buy shoes OP, and I’m not saying it’s ok that everything is profit, profit but that’s probably why. I don’t know what the answer is for you or for women who take a size 2!

Hotter do big sizes. I am a 8.5 or something like that. Very awkward.