If the Shoe Fits

[billroper]

I have worn a New Balance 13 EEEE for years now.

This size no longer fits.

This is not because my feet have gotten larger. It is because New Balance is, for some perverse reason, making their shoes narrower. I measured the sole of an older pair of New Balance 13 EEEE shoes against a new pair and the new pair was markedly narrower.

I have a new pair of 13 EEEEEE shoes from New Balance now. They are exactly the same width as the older 13 EEEE shoes that I was wearing.

Well, at least I have shoes. Although the number of choices in 6E is pretty limited...

Comments

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the resizing phenomenon that women's clothing manufacturers have been making us gripe about for years. They think that fresh customers will be impressed more by the psychologically more flattering size nomenclature, and they have low-wage minions to screen out the frustrations and product returns of the returning customers.

[madfilkentist]

This seems to be going in the other direction, though.

[jennlk]

but for men, it's about big feet, doncha know? I know that a usual conversation (especially moms of teenage boys) is about how big their sons' feet are.

A little less facetiously, I have noticed that men's shoes have changed the nomenclature on width. The last pair of sneakers I bought for T were EEEE, and the one before that were just called W, and they're the same size, from the same brand. (Used to be, iirc, that men's shoes went D, W, EEEE.)