Zara dresses - please help!

[AnnaQuayInTheUk]

I bought a gorgeous Zara dress from Vinted. It was a shirt dress style, size M.

I'm 5'5" and weigh 9 stone exactly. I've got big boobs compared to the rest of me, so wear size 12 tops and size 8 jeans/trousers.

The dress would not do up. There was no way it would stretch across my shoulders and bust. The measurements on Zara's website equated an M to a 12, so I don't know what went wrong.

I'm not that familiar with Zara - do I need to size up to an L which would swamp the rest of me for do I give up on buying Zara dresses. In which case, is there anywhere that has similar styles but cuts more generously?

Zara sizing is all over the place. It’s best to try on in store for this reason. Fast fashion, innit?

With Zara I invariably size up - even if the smaller size would do up, you need a generous amount of material with cheap fabric, so things will hang elegantly.

There’s always the option of buying a much bigger size and having the thing altered to fit - depends if it’s worth the extra expense to you.

Massimo Dutti is a slightly higher quality Inditex brand. They do specialise in floaty dresses (and lovely looking separates) so would be worth trying:

https://www.massimodutti.com/gb/

I've never bought from their store. Most of my clothes come from Vinted. I try to buy more mid-range like Hobbs, Whistles etc. the Zara dress looked lovely and it's exactly what I want - until I tried it on. I appreciate my upper body is bigger than my lower body, but I wouldn't say I was a Size L.

Zara is a nightmare. I can be a small and a large in the same order.

Thanks @Tocsin . I've heard of Massimo Dutti but never looked at their site. That's my sort of style, so I will look out for the brand on Vinted.

Zara sizing is hell. I have a few nice summer dresses from there that I bought in TK Maxx, they are an extra small, a medium and a large.

I do think you have to be realistic about proportions though, OP. A dress that fits your upper half will inevitably be too big for the rest of your body - so if you want it to fit properly you need an alterations service / seamstress / tailor. Mass produced clothes just don’t fit every body perfectly.

I might be wrong but compared to other clothes and fit that i wear, l think that a XXL is 16, XL 14 and L 12. And so on. But also when you buy online when you choose your size it will state 'smaller than usual' or 'larger' so it's all a rough guess.