To say vanity sizes should be rolled back?

[amoreoamicizia]

I bought some vintage St. Michael shorts this weekend in a size 12 which fitted me perfectly. In current sizes I'm an 8 or sometimes- incredibly- a 6 (looking at you, Boden).

As flattering as it is to think of myself as a size 8, it's simply not the truth or a reflection of reality. A small size 12 does seem about right, as that was my size as a slim-ish teenager in the 90s.

Who is this vanity sizing really helping? Who does it serve? 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?

I can remember being a teeny tiny 8 stone when I was in my early 20's, was 5'6" and did about 13 exercise classes a week. I was a size 12, I could never get into a 10. I suspect these days it would be a size 6 or 8.

just pick 2-3 sizes in the clothes you like and try them on

Which is fine if you're in the shop and they have the sizes.

Not fine if you're ordering online, look carefully at the size charts, do all the quizzes, order the size they suggest and it doesn't fit.

Or you order 2-3 sizes and they get all sniffy with you 'because you return too many items'.

I have a lovely original Laura Ashley dress which I bought years ago from ebay. The label says it's a 12. I'm an 8 to 10. I'd say it's a small 6.

The only annoying thing is lack of consistency, but that just means shops that aren’t consistent across their range (eg New Look) I don’t order online from them. Given more woman shop online now, it does seem that it would be useful to have an agreed sizing what a size 10 means waist, hips, chest wise etc.

one that really annoys me is when shops don’t stick to their own advertised sizing, like when M&S decided to make everything longer, so their short leg was now the length of their old regular leg. In itself not a disaster, but no one updated the website size guide so I merrily ordered the short leg thinking I was getting a particular inside leg length and I wasn’t. Believe it hit their sales enough that they’ve abandoned the new sizing. I still would prefer to try on than faff about ordering trousers from them to be certain, which means I haven’t bought from them when buying summer work clothes this year as I needed to shop on line.

My SIL is exactly the same weight now as she was as a student back in the late 1980s. Then, she took a size 12. Today, she takes a size 6.
No wonder we have a fucking obesity crisis in this country when people who are actually clinically obese are able to wear a size 14.

So you can't fit into a 12 and your conclusion is that the dress must actually be a 6. I think you may be being optimistic about the extent to which the sizes have changed sorry 😁

Any chance you'd be up for measuring the garment width? It may be mislabelled.

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.