SHOE TRADE FINDS PERFECT FIT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22657, 7 June 1948, Page 5

SHOE TRADE FINDS PERFECT FIT

LONDON, April 27

If that colourful adjective, “romantic.” better fitted the rather drab subject of feet, it would aptly describe the footwear revolution and universal boom that will result from Britain’s first scientific foot survey. This has disclosed that our customary lasts —and so the shoes made on them —have been modelled in length and width on a formula now proved wrong. And as feet carry us everywhere we go. this brings the promise that we shall go in greater comfort, especially in our readymades, when the discovery has time to become of universal benefit..

This good shoe news has come about through scientific study by the Shoe Trade Research Association, of Kettering, Northamptonshire. It has shown that, for each one-third of an inch a foot grows in length, its girth increases three-twentieths or about one-seventh of an inch —not by a quarter, as last makers for generations have thought. Apparently the “cobbler's last” _of song and story has from time immemorial “like Topsy, just growed”— nobody knowing just how or why the original calculations were made. Ends Cramped Feet

The new and unexpected discovery means that larger-size shoes graded in the customary way are too broad, inducing many wearers to cripple their toes by buying footwar too short in order to get a close fitting. Similar sizes of correct length are too narrow, thereby being producers of corns. These lest findings are confirmed by actual shoe sales, which show a preference by customers for narrow fittings in large sizes and for wide fittings in small sizes. The researchers believe that they have found the main cause of tired, aching and injured feet. They predict that the ney/ lasts, called “precision graded,” which several manufacturers are now making, will bring to foot sufferers many a sigh of relief. The first of the precision shoes are already the spearhead of the trade’s export drive.