Absolutely bonkers sizing getting worse every year.

[Stillcountingbeans]

Within the last week I have bought a t-shirt in size 20 and a jacket in size 8. Both fit me!!
The t-shirt was in that horrible synthetic fabric that clings in all the wrong places just like cotton doesn't. I had to go big so it would hang properly from the bust and not cling to every bump and bra strap.
The jacket I can only imagine is in a style that is supposed to look big?

What on earth are the shops playing at?

I've pulled a load of boxes of old clothes from 20 years ago down from the loft. They are beautiful designer clothes which is why I kept them. I've been going through with my dd to see if anything works for her.
They are minuscule. I was an 8-10. These clothes are around a current day size 4. My dd is an 8-10. Sadly they aren't even close to fitting her.

I’ve just received a top I ordered from Boden. I’m a size 12/14 top, but looking at the reviews I ordered an 18- it fits perfectly! Why are some things sized normally and some not? The fact that so many people mentioned it in their reviews suggests it’s not me getting fatter!

Shops profile their customers and some demographics are slimmer than others.

However, I think part of the reason nowadays for the sizing inconsistency is that shops now don't know who their customers are. The explosion in online selling and fast fashion, plus the fact that demographics who used to not buy many clothes are now strong customers, plus us getting bigger, have all confused the matter a great deal. It's much harder now for them to work out who they're selling to and therefore how to profile.

Are there people who really shop in certain places just because the sizes are reduced? I just find it bizarre. Surely no one is asking what size you’re wearing and you’re more concerned with looking good.

I got given a t-shirt from Next for Christmas. It was around my size but it was a tent and it wasn’t in the baggy style as I saw pic of model wearing it. Honestly if you’d had me guess what size it was I’d have gone for at least three sizes above what it reported to be.

Designer clothes have always come up small. This is, if I'm honest, in part for image reasons, but also because rich people tend to be thinner.

Are there people who really shop in certain places just because the sizes are reduced?

Some. But not enough to make it worth the whole very, very complicated business of deliberately messing up your sizing (I really can't stress enough how complicated it is) just to appeal to the vanity of those people.

Sizing is based around a seller's medium. Whatever the average, most popular size is, that's their medium. It needs to be for costing, production numbers and all sorts of reasons. So if you're selling way more larges than mediums, you'll need to reconfigure because your large is actually your medium. They're commercial enterprises. They're not trying to flatter or lie to people, they're trying to sell.

For all the irritation of it - and it is a frigging nightmare - it would also help if consumers changed their expectations a bit. We have got bigger, so there are going to be inevitable changes around that, and not everyone in the market has been buying their own clothes for 20+ years and expects size whatever to look a certain way. And there's also no real reason why anyone should walk into a large chain store, pull a mass produced item off a hanger and expect it to fit as if it was tailored for them.