Are Guidomaggi shoes any good? This hands-on Guidomaggi review has everything you need to know.

Elevator shoes – also called “height increasing shoes” or “tall shoes” – are shoes that make you look taller. In the same way that high heels make women appear taller, heightening shoes add a couple of inches to a man’s height.

Tall shoes aren’t for everyone, and I’m not recommending that all short men should wear them. More on that here:

Should Short Men Wear Elevator Shoes?

But if you are going to wear height increasing shoes, you have to make sure they’re stylish. Unfortunately, many elevator shoes are downright ugly, but Guidomaggi is different.

About Guidomaggi

Emanuele Briganti created Guidomaggi, a shoe company that makes luxury height increasing shoes, to offer customers elevator shoes and boots that actually look good.

Emanuele is 5’9? and a long time menswear enthusiast. He couldn’t find any heightening shoes that actually looked good.

He saw that most elevator shoes were mass-produced in Asia, and he believed that he could create a more comfortable and better-looking product.

Guidomaggi shoes are handmade (sewn by hand, as opposed to machine-made) in Italy using old school, time-tested techniques honed by Emanuele’s great-grandfather, Guido Maggi.

How do Guidomaggi shoes work?

So how do Guidomaggi shoes make you taller? They include an extra insole called the “increaser insole”. It’s removable, and it comes in different thicknesses.

Thicker = taller. So you can choose between 2.4, 2.75, 3.1 or 4 inches of extra height. In my opinion, 2.4? is plenty!

My Experience

Guidomaggi carries all kinds of shoes, from dress shoes and loafers to boots and sneakers. I love boots, which tend to have thick heels anyway, so I chose to review the Madrid brown leather boots.

They’re made with full-grain leather, goatskin lining, waxed laces and a rubber sole (which is much better than leather for walking on wet surfaces).