Your .fit

Your last is not a cast of your foot as it is today. Years in shoes narrow the forefoot and turn the big toe inward, and copying that would only hold it there. We build for the foot underneath: toes given back their spread, the arch left free to work. The front will feel more open than you are used to. That is deliberate.

The inside edge runs straight from your heel to the tip of your big toe, and the form widens along it, so the toe reaches forward instead of being turned in. The little-toe side gets its own bump. Ahead of your longest toe there is roughly a thumb's width of length — your foot lengthens as it takes your weight, and it needs somewhere to go.

Across the ball and over the instep, what matters is not width on the ground but volume — the measurement all the way around. Two feet the same width can need quite different shoes: one high and narrow, one low and broad. Your last is matched to the girth at both, which is how a shoe can hold you without pressing.

The upper is stretched over this form, so the last is the inside of your shoe. On the card below, the dark shape is your foot and the tan outline is the last — the margin between them is your room. Close over the ball and instep, where the shoe should hold you; open at the toes, where it should not. Leather eases a little in the first week. It never gives back length.

Your foot and your last are solid forms. To get them onto a page we look at them from above, from the side, and in slices — and something is lost every time. An outline shows the widest part of the form and nothing behind it, so a margin that looks generous on paper may sit somewhere else on your foot. We build from the full three-dimensional scan; these drawings are how we show you what it says, not what we measure.