Digging their heels in

Women with big feet have had to get used to wearing clumpy shoes. But a few pioneers are insisting on change, reports Olivia Kelleher

Women with large feet often develop an obsession with shoes. They yearn for "dangerous" footwear like that worn by Carrie Bradshaw in Sex And The City, dreaming of wearing 1940s-style slingbacks with cone heels and rhinestone-encrusted enamelled blossom. Almost invariably, however, their options are limited to clumpy masculine shoes or trainers.

When she was a teenager Gina Hennessy was ridiculed for having size-nine feet. Shoes had been an issue since she went looking for dainty kitten heels to wear on her confirmation day.

"All I wanted was what my friends were wearing," she says. "I was so self-conscious about it. I think every woman in the world who has big feet has a complex about them. "My heart goes out to teenagers who have big feet. Shopping can be a nightmare."

So seven years ago the former hairdresser decided to open a shop specialising in larger sized women's shoes.

She started to search for manufacturers only to find that many viewed making "big shoes" financially unviable. Eventually she persuaded two firms, in Italy and the US, to work with her, and in 2000 she opened Cinderella Shoes in Tullamore, Co Offaly.

"You speak to women who have only ever worn black shoes because they could never get different colours in their size," she says. "They go into shops to be told that eight is the cut-off size. Many times they would have bought an outfit for a wedding only to find they haven't a hope in hell of finding shoes."

Hennessy's biggest challenge is finding shoes for the adolescent market. Irish teenage girls are starting to tower over their mothers - and are fast reaching sizes 10 and 11. She travels to Düsseldorf and Milan twice a year to source fashionable shoes for fickle teenage buyers. She also makes an annual trip to New York, to keep up with trends in the adolescent market there.

Hennessy only hires staff whose feet are sizes eight and a half and up, to ensure they can empathise with their customers. She also offers an appointment service, to allow customers to try on shoes with different outfits.

For many women, a visit to the Co Offaly shop is more than just a trip to buy shoes: it is the answer to a problem that has gnawed away at them for years.

One of them, Angela O'Loughlin, says her shoe hassles were solved the day a Cinderella Shoes leaflet dropped through the letter box at her home, in Blackrock, Co Dublin.

"I have always loved shoes but ended up wearing runners after I was pregnant, as my feet spread from a size eight to 10. I couldn't get anything to fit me until I got that flyer in the door," she says.

"I couldn't find anything which was attractive or stylish. I wore trouser suits all the time because they camouflaged my clumpy, masculine shoes. All I ever wanted was stylish shoes, and now I can get them."

O'Loughlin believes shops like Hennessy's could do well elsewhere in the country, as she has embraced the opportunity to buy appealing footwear. From being confined to runners or unattractive shoes, she now owns stylish riding boots and petite fairytale-style shoes. She also has a pair of Italian red suede boots on order. "The last time I went in I bought three pairs of shoes," she says.

It seems O'Loughlin could be right about the potential for others to copy Hennessy's success: women are getting taller and, as a result, have larger feet. According to the British Footwear Association, 3 per cent of women in the UK take a size eight and a half or larger. Here, Joe Reynolds of Clarks Shoes Ireland says a size eight is no longer considered particularly large, as teenage girls increasingly reach five feet 10 and over. Clarks generally makes its women's shoes up to size eight, with size nine in selected lines.

Reynolds advises women with larger feet to shop early, while stocks are plentiful. "Places like Roches and Arnotts will stock Clarks up to a size nine at the start of the season, so I would advise people to be aware of that.

"It can be hard for teenage girls to buy fashionable shoes in large sizes, but we do everything we can to help them out."

Until more shoe shops cater for them, women with big feet can take comfort from their famous contemporaries.Hennessy points out that Cindy Crawford, Elle McPherson and Jerry Hall all have big feet - they wear sizes nine, nine and a half and 10, respectively. Big, it seems, is definitely beautiful.

Cinderella Shoes, tel: 0506-26696. You can also visit the shop's website at www.cinderellashoes.ie. The Clarks website is www.clarks.co.uk