Either H&M are bonkers or I am delusional

[SharingMichelle]

Grabbed this skirt last time I was in H&M. Not terribly exciting, but I thought it looked useful. Picked up a size 14.

Couldn't be faffed to try it on. Was in the queue to pay when I looked at it again and decided it was cut on the small side so I switched it for a 16. Am generally a fairly standard 14 with the odd 12 thrown in on a good day. Oh well.

Got home. Couldn't do the bloody thing up!

Back to H&M. Switched the 16 for an 18. I have never worn an 18 in my life. Tried it on this time, just to be safe. Horrendous!! Could squidge my tummy to death and get it done up, but all buttons gaping. So tight it was indecently short.

They didn't stock a size 20! I switched the blasted thing for store credit and came home.

Surely I can't have jumped from a 14 to a 20 without noticing? H&M are bonkers, right? Please could someone reassure me? Or set me straight? I am rather bloated at the moment, but my old clothes still fit, so surely...

Surely I can't have jumped from a 14 to a 20 without noticing? H&M are bonkers, right? Please could someone reassure me? Or set me straight? I am rather bloated at the moment, but my old clothes still fit, so surely...

The skirt in your OP looks very unforgiving. Denim, high waist, button down.

Are you sure it isn't the style? I mean are your size 14 skirts more stretchy/lower in the waist?

Sizing at H and M is bonkers, weirdly on their website they have a sizing chart and then when you order the clothes in what is supposedly your correct size you still end up in a sweat trying to remove a garment that is cutting off your circulation.

uhtred those of us who buy a lot if clothes can say generally where our sizing is. It's not a huge thing.

So we do notice if shops are way different or if sizing is inconsistent within the same shop. And it really is in H&M.

I buy a lot of clothes. And therefore I know damn well that most high street retail stores do vanity sizing. Which makes some people decide that those stores that do less of that are wrong.

I've decided that from now on I'm going to claim that I'm a proper 5'8". I'm not 5'8", I'm 5'2". but apparently one can just declare oneself to be something and (some) stores will follow. So, from now on, 5'8" will be defined as the heightI am. And if that means some other people find they can't get clothes in their height anymore - tough.

I'm going to agree with Uhtred. I am also petite and live in the US. Vanity sizing is such that I can't buy Gap XXS, or Banana Republic 00, as it is still too big. FWIW, I used to be a UK 8 but as the years have rolled on, and I've stayed the same size/weight, I've gradually become a UK 6...?

Anyway, in its defence, H and M is one of the only shops here where I know that if I buy an XS, it will be a true XS and will fit. Tops/shirts have always been consistent for me, no need to try and they fit fine. J Crew is the same - 00 always fits fine, not huge and gaping, just a genuine small. It is extremely galling though that when I'm a healthy size/weight/BMI, I struggle to find clothes that are small enough. Some shops here even have a 000 (triple zero) option. Will I find myself in 000000 by the time I'm 50?

Sorry uhtred but it's not something worth getting her up about.

Still, MN seems to have posters for who any thread on sizing or has the word fat on the title is like catnip.

Desperate that other posters should know they are fat, deluded etc

Must be a barrel of laughs round theirs .

Sorry Eric but those of us who are small and who find that shops have now just STOPPED selling reasonably sized clothes because of the upshift in sizing caused by the vanity lobby thing it IS something to get het up about. We are unable to buy clothes in some shops due to their pandering to the vanity of others. But shops can claim they sell a full range of sizes because they just moved the goalposts. And people who aren't impacted by this just swan around sayong that it's nothing to get het up about. My concern is that there is a clear campaign by the vanity lobby to get H&M to go the same way as eg Next, which will remove yet another cheap shop from the pool if shops where smaller people can get clothes. And that's a bit shit. Larger people got Next - fine. I wish them well, but let us keep H&M and Zara, that's all.

uhtred lots of people in lots of different shapes and sizes find shopping hard.

Yet I bet none of us are sat here naked. The internet gives us huge amounts of choice.

Stamping your feet because shops don't cater is just ridiculous. Market forces innit?

Some of us are just annoyed that we can't find clothes for ourselves or our teen dc anymore because of vanity sizing. And yes it's the market, not a personal grudge against people who benefit from vanity sizing. However it's pretty annoying when people then object to the few shops and ranges where genuinely small clothes are available. If you are a size 10/12/14/20 in m&s you can shop pretty much anywhere. If you need 2/4/6 in m&s then your options are very limited. Especially if you need tall or petite ranges, because they've often been reduced to carry plus size. So it comes across as a bit selfish when people complain they can't shop in one of the few shops you can.

UhtredRagnorsson
their clothes are obviously made for giants with stilts for legs

I sometimes feel like a little twig roaming the land of the giants. But I'm not a twig. It's not me that is off the scale.

Oh, of course. You're precisely the right size and everyone else who wider or taller is wrong. Personally I find supposedly 'regular' leg lengths too short, and I'm not a giant.

No one has complained that they can't shop in H&M have they? Or called for it to be closed.
They've complained that their sizing is inconsistent. And it is.

But as I say catnip .

Eric and stamping your feet because a shop doesn't vanity size - or starting a MN thread for the same reason - is also just ridiculous. As is claiming you are one size when in fact you aren't. Although I'm loving being 5'8" so maybe I'm changing my position on that one...

It's true though - people have got noticeably heavier over the years. Food used to be for sustenance. Now it's a leisure activity. Again, as a Brit in the US, I am astounded by the need to eat with absolutely everything, the snack breaks when no snack is needed, the size of portions. No wonder people have a skewed sense of what is normal when they're bombarded with sugar everywhere and clothes labelling is altered to cater to their vanity.

Lurked - exactly. It is just selfishness and entitlement.

element - so you have ignored all the people claiming they are a proper size 14 or whatever and H&M (and other non vantiy sizers) is/are wrong, but you fasten onto my comment? OK...

And as I said above, for me, H and M is one of the only shops with consistent small sizes...

Furious yyes. :( But I wouldn't be bothered if it hadn't had an impact on the range of sizes of clothing availabe in the shops. There is medical evidence that being slightly overweight is healtheir than being underweight, for example, so the development as a whole might not be a bad thing - but for those of us who find our shopping opportunities constrained, it is. That is my only issue, really.

If H&M's sizing policies offend someone, that person should just shop somewhere else. Because they will have that option.

Furious - yep. H&M sizing is just fine although as I mentioned their kids' sizes are...more than generous. but they are consistently that. I buy in store and I buy online (more than in store) and I've never found them to be inconsistent. The quality of the clothes is variable, sometimes. But not the sizing.

Uhtred, it's not out of the realms of possibility that a shop can use both vanity sizing and occasionally be inconsistent too, you know.

It's kind of rude to insist everyone bigger than you is wrong and definitely bigger than they think because of vanity sizing, especially if they are saying they can fit some size 14s in a shop but not others!

hopeful I think it's Very Important to some posters that others know they are deluded/wrong.

Their experience if buying three shirts in the same range is simply incorrect .

Hopeful I'm not saying everyone bigger than me is wrong. I'm saying the posters in this thread who are saying (in some cases) and implying in others that H&M are always inconsistent in their sizing are wrong. Because their alleged experience of finding 3 shirts in the same range that are labelled the same size but in fact aren't (whatever that size actually is) doesn't actually, as far as I'm concerned, negate my experience of buying multiple clothes in the same range (eg jeans in several different colours, ditto (work) shirts and work dresses) and finding them to be exactly the same size as each other. Whether or not they are vanity sized, the claim that they are always inconsistent is bollocks IMO because there are several posters on here not just me saying that they aren't. Which doesn't mean they are never inconsistent, but it does mean that they aren't always. I've bought a lot more than 3 shirts from H&M - they are my main shopping destination because they do clothes that actually are the size they say they are. If they were habitually inconsistent I would have noticed. But some posters are more invested in saying 'there there it's not you it's them' than in actual facts. I've bought clothes from H&M in the UK, US, Germany and Austria (possibly other places too but I can't be sure - I am sure about the countries I have named) and they have been remarkably consistent in their sizing. I like H&M.

I used to really rate H&M and I would never buy their clothes any more. they used to be good quality and do in between sizes as well.
These days the only brand I find that have correct/consistent sizes are Bon Marche. Anywhere else and I literally have no idea what size I am. That goes for shoe sizes as well.

I own a size 10 dress from H&M which fits me, i am not a size 10.

I think its ridiculous how different sizes are in each shop.

Just realised my last post supports all the posts about vanity sizing. Hadn't really thought of it before, just assumed that the dress was mislabeled. I think it also depends on the fabric.

Different items will come from different suppliers quite likely, hence some people finding inconsistency in sizing and some not...