I wear about a size 11 or 12 in women’s shoes. I shop at DSW and every time I can even find a size 11 or 12 in the styles I would want to wear, the shoes are too tight. I wear comfortable, well padded Easy Spirit shoes to work and I was wondering what other Doper Wimmen with big feet do in order to be well shod. I’ve never done this before, but I just bought a couple pairs of sleek leather slip on shoes that were made for men. I’m afraid to buy shoes off the net, but there was a thread not too long ago about just that subject. What do you all do?
My 18 YO daughter has an 11W woman’s foot which is more or less a man’s 9.5 D - 10 D depending on brand. The problem she really has is finding “cute” shoes in popular women’s styles and brands most of which cut off at size 10. All the “girly” stuff in her size is mostly off brand, 2nd tier junk re construction quality.
Having said this men’s and women’s feet do (on average) differ somewhat and a man’s “last” (re the foot sole size model around which the shoe is built) will not necessarily be all that supportive for a women’s foot as the width is likely to be wider and sloppier (for the woman) for a given narrow medium or wide width in a man’s size.
Clarks are among the better brands for women with larger feet, quality and fit wise, even if the styles are somewhat conservative. They’re not inexpensive, but they are quite well made and come in sizes up to 11 -12 extra wide.
I wear either 8 1/2 or 9 wide, and they’re almost impossible to find in the stores. Once in a long while I luck into finding a good pair at DSW, but I usually end up buying them from catalogs. I’ve had success with Lane Bryant, Roamans --not the clothes from those two catalogs, as they’re heinously ugly, but the shoes are pretty cute. I’ve also bought from the Massey’s shoe catalog, and those have been very high quality, if a little more expensive.
In my experience, I’ve only once had to return a pair of shoes I got from a catalog, and it wasn’t because they didn’t fit. That particular pair had very high heels and no arch support whatsoever, and I have very high arches.
I don’t have really large feet, but I have discovered little boys size 5 1/2 fit me perfectly. I usually get sandals in little boys shoes - much cheaper.
Are you by any chance three feet tall? I’m curious about how an adult could be ambulatory and keep balanced with such tiny feet!
I wear a women’s 9.5-10. They’re also unusually narrow, so even if I wanted to wear men’s shoes, they’d be waaaay too wide. Even women’s are too wide. I can’t imagine that I’d want to wear men’s shoes, though.
Shoes sizes are not perfectly linear and directly correspondent to inches. A men’s 5.5 is about 6.5 in women’s and the interior heel to toe of a women’s 6.5 is about 9 1/8 to 9 & 3/8ths inches in length. It’s not 5 1/2 inches long. A woman’s size 8 (the average) is barely a half inch to .75 inches longer.
Boys 5.5 is not so small. I usually buy boys sandles, because their feet are wide like mine. Boys sizes 4.5-5 are just about womens 7-8.
I wear a women’s 10, and sometimes I buy men’s shoes. I don’t tend to go for “girly” shoes anyway, so the fact that they can be hard to find usually isn’t a problem for me. It used to be a pain at prom time, though.
Oh. Well, she did say little boys. I was half kidding.
Pics? 
You know what they say about women with big feet, don’t you?
We can kill you with our shoes. 
I wear a women’s 10 (sometimes a 9.5 since I lost weight) and I think most of my shoes, except for the “good” shoes I wear to job interviews and such, and my Vivienne Westwood pirate boots, are men’s (athletic shoes, skateboard shoes, and hiking boots, mostly). But then again, I refuse to wear high heels and I don’t like feminine styles, so it works for me. I’ve always been kinda perversely proud of my big feet. 
Me too. Besides, my feet are pretty, even if they are pretty big. 
Really? I wear 8-9 (depending on the style) and my feet are def on the wide side. I really don’t have problems finding shoes. Heck, even Payless sells “wide width” (but I have noticed their stuff runs small- I can wear a 9.5 in their styles).
I wear women’s size 9.5 - 10… but I have never bought men’s shoes. It didn’t even occur to me that I could do that. :smack:
I suppose it’s because I’ve never had much trouble finding shoes I like, though. Even cute ones. I wear sparkly blue Skechers right now, and most of the summer I wore Simple sandals. I also have a pair of generic navy canvas shoes I got from Target for something like $8.
Wear an 11 - used to be medium (B) width, but now am WW and really have a hard time finding shoes in stores. I’ve had a good experience (so far!) with Zappos, purchasing both athletic-style shoes as well as work/casual shoes from there. I haven’t worn heels in years - and don’t miss them! I’d also second purchasing from catalogs like Massey’s, which offers a very wide variety of hard-to-find sizes, both small and large. I have bought several pair of mens athletic shoes - some of them fit me well, others did not, but maybe that’s because my feet and the way I walk can sometimes cause my toes to rub against the top of the shoes, creating very painful blisters on top of my toes … :eek: Some good brands for me are: Propet and SoftSpots. Hope this helps!
Personally, ladies, I’d rather you took 'em off first…
I think part of the problem is that my right foot is a titch larger than my left foot, and my right pinky toe sticks out. I find so often with the wide Payless shoes they will fit beautifully on my left but not my right foot. When I pay a little more money, the problem is less painful for me. I was at DSW last night, and saw that they had a larger selection of wide widths than I’ve ever seen there before, but in the higher quality shoes I seem to wear 9W instead of 8.5W, and they didn’t have any of the ones I wanted in a 9W.