Have you ever wondered what European shoe sizes correspond to? For example, if you have a foot size of 39, what does the number 39 correspond to? They are certainly not centimeters, otherwise you would have a rather long foot…
The unit of measurement used in Europe for footwear, in fact, corresponds to French points, a parameter which corresponds to 2/3 of a centimetre, or 0.66 centimetres. So, in the case of our example, if you have a shoe size of 39, this means that your shoe is 39 French points, or 39*0.66 cm = 25.74 cm, therefore approximately 26 centimeters.
If we then want to know how many centimeters our foot is, we will have to remove 1.5/2 cm from this measurement and we will thus obtain the length of our extremities. This is because, in each shoe, a space of 1.5/2 cm is left between the end of the big toe and the shoe, so that the shoe is comfortable and not too tight.
So if we want to find out how long our foot is starting from the size of our shoes, the calculation to do is
shoe size × 0.66 cm – 1.5/2 cm
On the contrary, if by measuring our foot we want to find out approximately how much our shoe size is, we must do the reverse operation
(foot centimeters – 1.5/2 cm) ÷ 0.66 cm
Clearly there are conversion tables that do this job for us without the need to do the calculations.
But why are French points used in Europe? The origin is unclear, but one hypothesis is that by restricting the unit of measurement to the centimeter, shoe sizes are thus whole numbers – like 39 – rather than numbers with a decimal point – like the corresponding 25.74. In short, a simplification to make life easier for shoemakers and consumers!
