Comparision of men's foot measurements in relation to foot ratio and dress shoe size

In industrial designing of ready-to-wear shoes, one important factor to consider is that the population has diverse fooot shapes as well as foot length. The general shape of a foot could be represented by "foot ratio", i.e. the ratio of width to length. In this study, we measured several dey aspects of young Korean men's foot, and compared the results with their shoe sizes and general foot shapes. To this end, 172 male subjects were categorized according to their shoe size (small, medium, large) or foot ratio (wide, narrow, intermediate). The statistics of this survey indicated that the people with narrow foot shap have significantly greater foot length compared with the one having wide foot shape. Conversely, subjects having wide foot shape manifested significantly greater foot and ankle girth as well as significantly greater foot breadth. However, different foot shape groups showed no significant differences in heel width, heel ankle girth, instep height, and malleolus height. On the other hand, subjects wearing larger shoe size showed significantly larger foot measurements except instep and ankle heights, whereas subjects with shoe sizes 260 and below measured significantly more narrow heel and lateral metatarsal breadths. The deviation between foot length and dress shoe size(length) was greater in groups with wide foot shape and in groups wearing large shoe sizes. The results of this survey indicated that the subjects with wide foot shape apparently choose a size or two larger shoes for them as a compromise for a better breadth fit.eadth fit.