To say vanity sizes should be rolled back?

You can see that with kids clothing, our sizes are huge!

We’re mostly agreeing here aren’t we? The sizing is arbritrary and meaningless, it’s the consistency that’s the issue.

In terms of future change I think we’ve peaked in terms of height and shoe size. Those are the measures that indicate overall skeletal growth due to better nutrition. Where we haven’t peaked, and need to, is waist and hip size, which is basically fat. So the sooner a standard measure exists to remind people that they are changing shape, the better.

I did a half marathon in Spain recently. The finishers tshirt is teeny tiny, whereas the ones from UK races are always too big.

Of course it matters.

People thinking they are a healthy "average" size 14, in the UK is not doing anyone any favour.

If you are happy as a bigger size, fine, but at least we should be honest about it. I found clothes in mainland Europe must more realistic.

I'm about the same size as you. A 12 in old money. I totally agree, it's nuts.

Size 10 in Next can drown me. I I got some size 6 trousers in Oliver Bonas lately. I'm not anywhere close to a size 6, maybe one of my legs is.
I don't know where people who are a 6 in 'old sizes' actually shop!

But you won't get consistency. To repeat myself, I make my own clothes and patterns come with the actual measurements but with vastly different amounts of ease depending on the design.

I think some of the angst is this misunderstanding. Clothes aren't all meant to be body skimming. Obviously it is totally your prerogative to style an item more fitted than the designer intended but that doesn't mean they think a size 8 has a 30 inch waist necessarily it may mean they have deliberately designed it to have it hang very loosely.

Obviously there are also lots of really poorly designed and/or manufactured clothes and they can be all over the place anyway.

Who is this vanity sizing really helping?

It's not vanity sizing, it's size inflation. People have got bigger, so everything designed to accommodate them has got bigger too, including cars, beds and doorways. Although for some reason nobody wants to believe it.

Sizing has gone into the shitter for everyone; it's a consequence of insane fast fashion being pumped out everywhere so there's never been more choice and yet quality is in the toilet. Nobody can profile their customers any more so they can't size accordingly.

The only solution is a mass mindset shift that will never happen. We'd have to chloroform, chain and cement bucket the genie to get him back into this bottle. I always wanted better choice for clothing...careful what you wish for, I guess.

There just needs to be consistency and maybe all the sizes renaming because of the connotations attached to them.

Telling grown women to buy clothes from the kids section is ridiculous. Have you looked at teen’s clothing recently? It is obviously not screaming professional attire. I get that it can be difficult to care about other women and their problems but this is just low.

Isn't it about time clothing manufacturers were held to account and forced to roll back sizes to what they were in the early 00s, at least?

How do you envisage them being forced? Even if there were any point to this, it doesn't seem a very practical suggestion.

Promise you, I was there, a 10 was 24 inches. 8 was 22 which was too tight on me (despite my best efforts!)

Okay, so I think the reason these threads turn into a big argument between smaller and larger women is because, as we all know, women come in many different shapes as well as sizes. Different brands are aiming at different demographics, so there can't be sizing consistency across all brands, as some people would like. The most consistent sizes across brands are more likely to be the ones used as prototypes, which will typically be about a 10 or a 12, depending on the brand. The clothes will be designed for that size, then the smaller and larger sizes will be sized down or up accordingly.

However: if the increments between the sizes are fairly small, then sizes smaller than the prototype will be fucking massive (from a skinny woman's perspective) and tiny (from a larger woman's perspective). I'm quite average sized now, so I don't have this issue. But when I was thinner, I wore all the sizes from 4 to 10, and found some brands to be insanely generously sized, and the inconsistency to be really annoying. But I suspect I would have had the opposite experience if I'd been above a size 14-16 - then some of the brands I thought were vanity sized would have seemed quite small.

Yeah, I can't get worked up about this, I know what size I am in M&S, what size I am in COS, and what size I am in Zara - they are all different, but as long as they are consistent in each store, then it's all good.

Hop along to Zara then, where a size 12 is extra large, and a size 14 doesn't exist. Or Primark, where the small sizes at the front of the rails look like petwear. No adult whose body includes a spine, stomach and vital organs is 'sized out' by increasingly big clothes.

There's not consistency in the way there was in the 80s. But I remember shopping in the 80s and we had Chelsea Girl and Topshop, C&A, M&S. Catalogue shopping. Shops changed their stock twice a year in September and March. Most stock made in the UK or Europe by a handful of suppliers.

Now you have far more different shops, online retail from around the world, stuff made all over the planet, shops like Zara and Primark adding in new stock every couple of days, thousands of suppliers. Far far more choice, but the quality and consistency has gone out the window.

It WAS a loose fit. On me, an overweight Amazon. The sleeves were the right length for me, too. There's no way anyone under about a 12 could have worn it... and where I live, Uniqlo has stopped online returns in store so you have to pay to post it back if it doesn't fit.

It doesn't matter though. UK sizes are literally arbitrary, and everyone knows that some shops are bigger than others. A 6 or an 8 or a 12 is whatever that particular shop or brand says it is. Which, certainly, is stupid. I hate clothes shopping and would far rather have the measurements so I can just buy online without trying things on. But I don't even know how anyone can say they 'are' a particular size.

Does it really matter? I think most people who think they’re overweight know they’re overweight, if that’s the point you’re trying to make. Whether you can squeeze into a Boden 10, but would be a ‘vintage’ 14, does it matter?

Exactly. Lots of women - particularly women from Japan and Malaysia etc - are naturally tiny in stature compared to us (comparatively) hefty Anglo Saxons. It must be a pain in the arse, and not exactly stylish, if the only clothes that fit you are from the kids' sections!

But that's the problem, there should be consistency.

This.
But, it's madness. Sometimes 6, sometimes 16.

Yes.
The person I saw recently who demanded to know how she can possibly be heavier than when I weighed her last year when she’s now wearing a whole size smaller. People do still use it as a measurement of being thinner/lighter.

If a size 8 used to be average then that’s medium, if 14 is now average then that’s the new medium. They have to adapt to a growing society!
Why can’t medium still be size 8 and people above that adapt to the fact they will need to choose a label with a larger size on? Because it doesn’t sell clothes, that’s why.
Average size just means that there are now more people that size, it’s not great for people’s health to think that as a society we just accept that by vanity sizing.

I disagree. No-one's thinking 'I'm a size 14, I'm not that overweight'.

If someone is clinically obese they can see and feel their excess weight, the number on their clothes doesn't come into it.