Vanity sizing

[Bruisername]

is it worse?

I’ve lost a bit of weight recently and back to my early 20s weight and more or less shape - 25 years on. Back then I was a 12/14

now I’m finding the sizing is haywire. In a lot of shops I’m a large but others a small for tops and bottoms 10/12 seem to fit

but today I had the weirdest which was a wool coat from John Lewis and the one that fitted was an 8. I’ve never been an 8 and in other brands I definitely wouldn’t have been

i look at my 15yo and she is a 4/6 and think in old money she’s an 8/10 but is it healthy to have the little numbers? Do teenagers aspire to be size 0 like they did in my teenage years?

and it makes ordering online hard because what do I pick size wise!

anyway rant over but I’d be interested to know if people think this has become more a thing and sizing is even less consistent across brands than even just 5 years ago

Yes I think that’s a worry for teen girls because they’ll end up in the shops that do ‘one size’ which is invariably tiny

my dd is 5ft10 and wears anything between a 4 & 8. Her friends who are similar proportional size but a lot shorter must really struggle! But I guess that’s not vanity sizing but just a change in how they stock clothes.

i think my gripe is more around inconsistency of sizing!

It's definitely a thing. Brands noticed that people were getting bigger and rather than simply introducing more sizes they made the existing sizes bigger. I have some Size 12 and Size 14 clothes from the 1980s/1990s that I got from second-hand shops and they are noticeably smaller than modern clothes of the same nominal size. I wonder where women who are genuinely small i.e. short and slim are supposed to shop because even a Size 8 isn't necessarily that small anymore.

It's nothing to do with vanity, although for some reason people don't like that (I'm not denying that people have got bigger, but the inconsistent and crap sizing is not a conspiracy to delude fat people), but yes, sizing is absolutely haywire these days. Nobody knows who their customer is so they can't profile, the market is trying to keep up with the increased need for larger sizes but is still working it out, places like Temu and Shein are pumping out tons of random shite every day and messing up benchmarks, we once had too little choice and now we potentially have too much. When quality drops, sizing consistency does too. And it's not entirely the industry's fault... there does remain a customer expectation to pick up any mass produced item off a rail and expect it to fit like it was customised.

I don't have a solution.

Brands noticed that people were getting bigger and rather than simply introducing more sizes they made the existing sizes bigger.

They did both. Size runs have to be based around the modal; the bigger and smaller sizes are scaled up and down from that. That will be whatever size sells the most, as for every two of that size, they'll cut one smaller and one larger size, going up and down along the run. With more sizes available, they will also need a size break for a new size run, otherwise the bigger sizes start getting giant proportions in legs and arms and so on.

It does suck for smaller people. Perhaps in future we will get specialist stores for petite people in the same way we used to have specialist ones for plus sizes, as size breaks and new lines and so on just weren't cost effective unless they were a separate, dedicated brand.

Has sample size increases too?

Everything has got bigger. People have got bigger so everything that is sized around people - beds, cars, chairs - has got bigger too. With the explosion in choice and very cheap, very mass produced stuff, sizing and benchmarks have got completely out of the window too.

It's a mess, for sure. It just isn't a mass conspiracy to flatter fat women into thinking they're thin. Vanity has nothing to do with it.

I only used the phrase as that’s what it’s commonly called. Ultimately you know what size you are!!

I just wondered how the measurements of catwalk models have changed over the years - certainly they because less curvy at one point

I don't know so much about that. As I understand it, there's more diversity in high fashion models than there used to be, but that isn't saying much. With high fashion, the clothes are wearing the model.

I have jeans I bought 30 years ago, that are size 14. I've been buying 10/12 for a long time (same weight) but recently, in places like Next and M&S I need an 8. I don't know where actual thin people get clothes.

It's always been hard to buy rare sizes - it used to be bigger sizes were only available in specialist shops and this is still true to some extent. I'm very short and can't really buy much without altering it.

Well I wear 28" waist jeans and I can fit in a 26" waist in COS that shouldn't happen right? It is vanity sizing.

No, it shouldn't happen, but it isn't a conspiracy to make you think your waist is two inches smaller than it is. It's low quality production and inconsistent sizing driven by a number of factors.

I told you people don't want to hear it.

It depends where you're wearing them as in low waist or high and also how loose the designer thinks they should be. Or they've been badly manufactured

Yes it’s interesting - I guess if you measure it then it will be 28 inches and you could complain!

but with the 6/8/10 there’s no consistent measurement for it so they can all do what they want!!

I am small framed, 5ft 2, size 3 feet and stupidly small wrists, it is getting harder to buy clothes. Where a size 10 jeans used to fit and I longed to be a size 8 in my 20s, now a size 4 is roomy and there aren’t any size 2s I have to wear teen clothes but even those don’t really fit, age 11 fits in the waist but too short in the leg. It’s getting silly!

Well, this thread has made me feel shit! I'm 5'5" and weigh 8 stone, which is the lowest weight in the healthy range for my height. If I lost 2lb I would be classed as underweight and wouldn't be allowed to give blood. And I'm a size 8, which according to this thread "isn't even that small". Are we really to believe that I would have been considered "big" in the past and all the women who were fitting into an 80s size 8 were underweight? I just don't buy it. I'm not denying that people are bigger overall now but I also think we're exaggerating about how much sizing has been adjusted.

DP is all buffed with himself becuase he can wear size 32 trousers "still". He can't, all his trousers measure 35-36. If it's about inconsistent manufacturing not vanity sizing, why are they all bigger than they should be, none smaller?

🤣 I suppose if everyone feels good about themselves it’s a good thing!!

I do find it odd that they are so far off when it’s based on an actual measurement but you must be right that it’s just cheap manufacturing

my dad tried on a pair of trousers on primark when they first started getting popular over here and one leg was twice the width of the other! Either aiming for a very niche market or had some weird ideas on fashion!!

As do I, I’ve some clothes from the 80s and they are the same as now. I am also old enough in my fifties to remember women in the 80s and 90s and can categorically say they were not all waif thin as apparently the posters on here were. Many of them must have made Kate moss look fat the way they are going on about how skinny they were.

I am a little taller than you, in 1990 I weighed 7.5 stone and was a size 10.
There were no size 6's and size 8 was rare, so don't think you are anything other than small.

I didn’t know many waifs in the 90s and I’m glad we’ve moved away from that now

i never judge slimness by dress size because it totally depends on height and body shape

the other thing I hate most is that when fashion changes it’s almost impossible to find the style you like/suits you in the shops

Although to be fair, a person with a 28" waist will probably still need a waistband a bit bigger than that to allow for movement, even a bit of bloating, whereabouts on the waist and body it is supposed to sit and so on.

It's harder for women because we have even more variation in shape than men have. All I can really suggest is shop around and when you find your place, throw money at it. The advantage to not having standardised sizing is that it does make it easier to find something for your long legs, big boobs and so on. If everywhere worked to only one set of measurements and fit models, we would be even more stuffed.

Very true - I find M&S clothes never fit me right

Because people have got bigger, not smaller, so that's the way the "correction" will go. Things will not get smaller as customers get bigger; that won't sell and is unsustainable.

People always seem to think I'm denying that we've got bigger. I'm not. Sizing inflation occurs to keep up with consumer demand. There are many factors at play but it really is not a conspiracy to flatter fat people.

I think for some brands it is though - like the teen brands that do one size etc. but I dont think that’s changed over the years