My sister in law wore my Adidas Sambas for Thanksgiving weekend in 2019. Her flats were killing her feet on the way from the parking lot and she ended up wearing them the rest of the trip, including during a disgustingly muddy game of touch football in my brother’s backyard. No one batted an eye. Not one of my relatives stared at her feet like she was lounging around in men’s sandals. They just saw shoes. This is what I always think of when people ask me this question.
It comes up more often than you’d think for someone who generally writes about how to stay warm in a parking lot lot but here we are.
I work with eighth graders so I pay way more attention to sizing charts than I’d like to admit. Honestly, most adults do. Adidas men’s shoes run about a size and a half larger than their women’s equivalent. A women’s size 8 is approximately a size 6.5 men’s. That is literally the sum total of the barrier everyone treats as the Buildoleyzeum. Subtracting half a size from a number isn’t a philosophy, it’s basic arithmetic. The shoes themselves, the models; Sambas, Superstars, Campus; were not designed around some imagined difference in XY chromosome users’ feet.
The real difference, and why it isn’t as big as you’ve heard
They were designed around a last. A mold. And those molds aren’t reading passports before they trip out new shoes.
For starters, let me just get this off my chest, because transparency is this sites motto or something I think. For YEARS I thought women’s and men’s versions of the same shoe were actually constructed differently, maybe slimmer toe box, different arch support, some physical difference. I even wrote it out above, told a coworker last week like I was really dropping some knowledge. The same way I told my students that “irregardless” wasn’t a word for WAY too long before admitting I was wrong. Irregardless. Except this time I was wrong too, mostly. Lots of shoes, especially in Adidas’s classic catalog, are built on the exact same mold. Women’s and men’s lineups share the same shoe last, and are cut from the same materials, with nearly identical construction. What makes them a “women’s shoe?” The tag on the box, and the size range that it’s sold in. There are a handful of models that Adidas designs with women’s only colorways, which may use a different foam formula or density, sure. That happens. But the pair my sister in law rocked for a muddy football game? It wasn’t some inherently “masculine” model despite being from my closet. It was a shoe. Her feet were a women’s size 8, but Adidas happens to scale their women’s sizes down from the men’s line so when she tried my shoes on, size 8 fit and it just happened to be filed under Men’s because of how the company sells them.
To your question, can women wear mens Adidas? My honest opinion is no, not because there’s anything stopping you from doing so on a design or intention level. Men’s and women’s shoes are divided at the retail level,they get split into different sections in stores because that’ how we’ve separated shoes since forever and yes, the actual numerical size difference matters; womens Adidas sneakers rarely go above a size 8 or 9 where the men’s line will go up to 13 or 14, and inversely mens sizes rarely drop small enough to fit a significant portion of women’s feet. That is a frustrating limitation, an inconvenience, but not a stylistic choice.
However, if you’re a women who wears a size 9, 10, 11, there’s a better chance of finding cool colorways in the men’s department. There’s usually going to be better availability of sizes since men’s shoes come in more quantities, more colorways, and might even ret Strange as it sounds, just cheaper because of the resale market for Adidas sneakers is heavier on shoes listed under “men’s.” That’s a capitalism thing, not a fashion critique.
Where I think it gets interesting, and where I will fully admit I still screw this up
I think where people don’t ask, but where it actually gets interesting is fit through the ankle and heel versus the length of the shoe. Most of Adidas’s signature models are, comparatively, fairly flat shoes. They don’t have a ton of volume in the structure of the shoe itself for there to be much difference to “feminize” or “masculinize.” A womens Adidas Samba will fit your foot just about the same way a men’s will, low key and flat. Where I WILL see differences in women only releases is ankle collar height on certain models; slightly lowered, slightly more trimmed in. That changes how a shoe looks on the leg versus how it fits on the foot. And that is a design choice, albeit a far less significant one than people acting like the words “men’s shoe” imply.
What I will still slip up on, sometimes, is tricking myself into thinking that the men’s version of a shoe is the release I want simply because it’s what I’ve historically gone for. Case in point: last winter I bought a pair of Campus 00s. White and navy. The standard colors. Didn’t even LOOK at the womens silhouette because normally those would be my go-to colors. Then I saw someone wearing the women’s colorway at a school function, realized how much more I actually liked that shade of pink they used, and cursed myself for not checking it out before buying the “wrong” shoe.
I didn’t wear men’s shoes; I simply bought the wrong color for me. Same way I’ll wear the same damn ugly green sweater four years in a row because looking at new options is too damn hard.
No one is stopping you from wearing a men’s shoe if it fits and you like it. Men wear womens sneakers all the time and love them, especially if it’s the colorway they actually wanted but didn’t realize was offered for both genders. The sizing issue can be solved by doing a little math once, writing it down, and never thinking about it again.
The perception that they’re different is where things get murky, and where, honestly, both sides of the debate get it wrong. Your feet aren’t going to care if you trick them into thinking they’re wearing a pair of heeled boots or not.
My sister in law wore my shoes on Thanksgiving. Played in a football game in them. Lost those shoes; they had to be hosed off when we got back to the house. Still have the grass stain on them. Wouldn’t trade that weekend for anything, shoe debacle and all.
Gareth teaches in Leeds and dresses for four proper seasons, including the sideways rain. He writes about practical clothes, weatherproofing that actually works, and coats he’s put through a full Yorkshire winter.
