I used to think loafers were the sensible shoe. You know the one. The loafers. The thing you wear when you’ve stopped trying to pretend your legs go anywhere near your knees and just want your feet to feel comfortable enough by 3pm that you don’t have to scream into a cushion every time you catch yourself standing at work.
Then my sister Fern rocked up to Sunday lunch wearing a pair of chunky lug sole loafers and stood next to me in the kitchen. And I legitimately did a double take because holy shit she looked taller than me.
Except Fern is not taller than me. Fern is two inches shorter than me and has been since 2003.
And that’s when it started.
No spreadsheets. No shopping trips. Just a kitchen in Leeds and a very confused “wait have you grown?” directed at my own sister over a tray of roast potatoes.
So I measured. I went home and I measured every pair of loafers I owned up against my trainers and my ankle boots and a pair of Ballet Gardens that I bought in a dress-up hurry-up-and-wait moment in 2021 that I never wear because they make my feet look like the Siamese twins gave them to me as a wedding gift. Those pictured below.
Deep breath, here we go.
The science bit.
The thing no one tells you when they say loafers make you taller like it’s scientific fact is that the height isn’t coming from the loafer part. It’s coming from underneath it.
A classic flat, slim penny loafer, the ones that Gucci wants you to think they invented but they probs didn’t, gives you about half an inch of sole. Sometimes less. My oldest pair – black leather ones I bought second hand off a woman named Marguerite on Vinted who claimed they were “barely worn” when she blatantly stolen them from someone – max out at about 8mm at the heel. Which is not lifting you an inch anywhere. Literally a slipper with an ego.
But Fern’s loafers, the loafers that started this entire whirlwind investigation into optics vs physics, are on a lug sole that’s pushing a good inch and a half. Stick that baby next to a flat ballet pump and yeah, she’s going to look taller, just like I would if I strapped two hardbacks to the bottom of my feet. It’s not the style of shoe that matters. It’s the height underneath it. The loafer is just the marketing bit propping up the actual lift, which is 100% sole.
Which is why I measured Dominic’s loafers too. He works two desks from me and has very strong opinions about shoes and why they matter that I really did not ask for. Turns out his have about an inch of sole which lines up exactly with what he said to me unprompted last Tuesday: “They’re not life changing or anything but I feel less like a gremlin in meetings”. Which might be the most honest review of how much height a loafer actually gives you I’ve ever heard. He wasn’t even trying to review loafers he was just answering a question about why he was wearing them to an office pitch. The man cares about footwear more than anyone I know but there’s his quote, unchanged.
The long and short of it is that “do loafers make you taller” isn’t really yes or no. The answer is “depending on how thick that sucker sole is, and the word loafer isn’t doing any of the lifting.”
A thin loafer isn’t going to get you any taller than you are in socks. Not really. But a thick loafer with a hidden platform absolutely will. In the same way that a wedge or block heel will, because guess what? It literally is a wedge or block heel wearing loafers.
Why loafers specifically trick your eye, though the sole may not
Let’s tackle the second half of the equation, why your brain thinks you look taller wearing loafers when they actually might not be lifting you an ounce. You might not care about that if you like chunky platforms but I do, I care about both. I went into this entirely expecting to take some measurements and have a clean answer for you all. Simple math. Plummets.
Except when I checked my loafers against my flats – my beloved old flats that I think are worn down to about 5mm of sole but have lived through England winning the World Cup so they’ll always be cushioned in my heart – I could see Fern was right. Even my flat loafers that have about the same amount of sole as a shampoo bottle made me look taller, in the legs, than my trainers did. Not taller, longer.
Bigger difference.
And for a solid 20 minutes I stood in front of my hallway mirror in Chester staring at myself changing shoes like a lunatic until it clicked.
It’s the vamp. The part of the shoe that basically comes up to your ankle and sits over the top of your foot on a loafer. It’s lower than most trainers. Lower than most brogues. So you can see more of your foot and ankle when you’re wearing them. More leg showing = taller you, even when you’re not actually any taller than you would be wearing flat boots or sneakers. It’s like a crop top for your feet. Lower neckline = longer leg. Same trick.
(I spent about half an hour having an argument with myself out loud about this bit. I do not recommend what I was drinking on Thursday.)
The best evidence I have to back this whole “feels taller but isn’t” theory up was my mate Priya walking past my front door as I changed shoes on her way to put the bins out. She has never once, in the eight years I’ve known her, asked me or said an opinion about how proportionate my footwear is or isn’t but she caught me giving it some serious thought, stared at my feet and said “why do you look taller? What happened?”
I almost fell about myself with joy.
Because that was it. That was my entire half-glamour shot experiment laid bare by someone who hadn’t spoken to me about what I was looking for and has zero reason to be interested in whether I proved my theory right or not. If Priya can tell looking at me from the pavement while she’s holding a bin bag that something’s actually going on there, optically speaking, even if the loafer isn’t technically adding any height. That’s enough for me.
The moral of the story: shoes play tricks with both your eyes and your mind. Sometimes they line up. Often they don’t.
Which brings us pretty neatly to…
The ugliest loafer conspiracy no-one’s talking about.
Okay so here’s the bit where I have to own up to falling for basically exactly what I’ve been asking you all to question for the past week. About a year ago I bought a pair of loafers. Loafers that were sold to me with the language of “elongating silhouette” and “lengthening effect” and every other rom com dream shoe movie cliche with a punchable salesperson. From a brand I won’t name because I don’t want to receive the email telling me how great a writer I am right now.
Loafers that cost me £145 and left me standing on my front step in their packaging awaiting the engineering miracle of shoe designed.
Which were… loafers. With a 1cm sole and a slightly pointed toe.
That’s it. That was the magic formula. Pointy toes elongate your legs, pals. They do not.
I wore them once to a wedding in Harrogate in June. Calledum’s wife is 6’4” and was wearing a white pair of trainers that day so it was full capitalism coming for my life but… I did not look tall next to her. What I looked like was “someone who spent £145 on a pair of shoes with a pointed toe”.
Callum didn’t mention the shoes at all, bless him. He just said we should all start drinking in the marquee at nine because “the free bar always runs out” and let it go at that. Nothing about loafers and their bullshit promises.
While we’re on the subject though, I’ll be honest, I do love a good lug sole loafer. Fern’s, the ones I measured that made me question my sister’s entire life. They’re a different beast altogether and I want to talk about them before we finish, because they actually do what they say on the tin, sort of.
This whole weird trend of chunky, almost Frankenstein soled loafers is built on adding inches where your feet are. You know when I said nobody’s pretending those loafers of mine don’t have a thin sole? These loafers don’t give a shit what you think about their thinness. They’re lumbering colossuses of a shoe, strutting around like the.height.gods. Them’s the facts.
Pretty much every pair in this entire wave feature insole measurements so you know exactly how many millimetres they’re adding to your life. Some better than others. Nobody’s lying about how much lift you’re getting with a pair of these and because of that, I’m never calling them out on the lengthening spiel. They earn it. Where the padded half size too big ones just quietly hope you don’t notice the toe box is doing all the heavy lifting.
Loafers – and how tall they make you
To finish off I went out and bought myself a pair of the lug sole ones too. Because I was genuinely curious about them now I knew what I was looking for after the whole Callum at the wedding fiasco and also still hate those pointy ones with a burning passion that’s why they now live at the back of my wardrobe unused. BUT. The lug soles do it. They add height. Good solid numbers on the ruler height. About an inch and a quarter give or take on mine. But guys… do I feel tall wearing them? Do I feel like they’re tricking me into having extra inches?
Kind of no? Does my brain immediately leap to how much taller I look instead of how tall I actually am?
Also no.
I look like I’m wearing platform soles that someone stuck loafers on top of. And that’s okay! They’re really comfy.
And as long as I’m ready to admit that when I put them on I’m actually wearing ankle boots with a tiny bit of extra sole, and not a magical footwear item that is giving me things it cannot, then I’m cool with that.
I’ll let you into a secret, though. If you ask me now “do loafers make you look taller?” I’ll probably ask you what kind of loafer you’re wearing before I answer.
A flat leather sole is going to give you that slight leg-lengthening Priya noticed when she passed me my front door. It’s an illusion but a legit one. But if you want to add actual inches to your frame, to where you and the tall guy at the wedding can have a staring contest down the eyes? You need to go chunky. Lug sole. Bottom heavy. You lose the “proper” loafer argument at your own peril pals, I measured my sisters foot.
