Please choose your size carefully. We are not responsible for incorrectly fitting footware.
If you are visiting this page in hopes of finding the UK equivalent of your U.S. or Australian shoe size, here's the bad news: There isn't any 100% reliable way of converting one size to another size in another system, or vice versa, that will work for all shoes. The best guide is a conversion table provided by the manufacturer for that particular style of shoe. Catalogs and manufacturers' websites often provide such tables. A lengthy study of this problem, sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce and the Footwear Industry of America, concluded:
"...a strict mathematical interpretation was impossible, even a computer program or formula would not generate a conversion guide the industry would readily accept and use."
Shoe sizes are based mainly on the length of the shoe. In modern times, the length meant is the length inside the shoe — the length of the last, the form on which the shoe is made — not the length of the sole. Obviously, the last length must be greater than the length of the foot the shoe will contain.
Before the rise of manufacturing most shoes were custom made. English shoemakers apparently measured customers' feet with a ruler marked in thirds. When shoe sizes were systematized, the one-third inch difference between whole sizes was retained, and size 0 was a length of 4 inches. Sizes went from 1 to 13 for children and then from 1 to 13 again for adults. Half-sizes did not appear until late in the nineteeth century.
The American colonies adopted the English system, but made the zero size 3 11⁄12 inches. The reason for this change is unclear. Some say it was due to use of a defective standard, others that the change was made to make the sizes of American shoes more closely approximate the sizes of shoes in Europe.
In Europe, shoe sizes were measured in units equal to two-thirds of a centimeter, called a Paris Point or, in Germany, a Strich. Thus a size 40 shoe has an inside length of 40 × 2⁄3 cm = 26.67 cm, which is 10½ inches.
