sizing is a dumpster fire

oh and also racist, patriarchal, and anti-fat

If I were to ask any American woman today the hardest thing about clothes shopping, 99% of them will answer “figuring out my damn size”.

There’s a good reason for this and it is that sizing in the American fashion industry is a dumpster fire. Period. There is nothing standard or consistent about sizing from brand to brand, or even from item to item within a brand, or EVEN within different orders of the EXACT same item. 

Photo by Jennifer Burk on Unsplash

How did we get here? “Sizing” as a concept didn’t exist until the middle of the 19th century.

Until then (and for many years after in most cases), your clothes were made for you and your specific body. If you were poor, you made them yourself, if you were rich, a seamstress made them for you. Often numbers weren’t even involved since the items were fitted onto your actual body. A few things happened in the middle of the 19th century: uniforms for the Civil War needed to be mass produced quickly, printing advances allowed sewing patterns to be reproduced, and advertising came into being. Sewing patterns did specify numbers, but they were actual body measurements, and a skilled seamstress or tailor could easily adjust the ratio for varying measurements in different body parts. Sizing charts as we now know them didn’t exist until one  was created to facilitate the production of men’s uniforms during the Civil War. This chart mainly used the chest measurement. Not until World War II (aside from sewing patterns), when women suddenly needed uniforms as well, were women’s measurements translated into standardized sizes. 

However, women’s bodies (generally) have more curves than men’s and this chart was much more complicated. It was also racist. As mentioned in this video (which is the best quick summary of sizing I’ve ever come across, definitely worth a watch), women of color’s measurements were taken but then not added into the charts. In addition, since women were paid for participating, many of the measurements may have come from poor and malnourished women. 

For a brief period in the mid-20th century, these charts were made mandatory for manufacturers by the US government. They were made voluntary in 1983, during many of the Reagan deregulations that are now causing massive systemic issues in many industries. 

The result was that clothing manufacturers could manipulate sizing however they liked.

The fewer sizes available, the more exclusive a brand positions itself as. Many brands secretly and some quite openly don’t want their clothes to be associated with people in larger sizes. Continuing with this anti-fat approach, brands began to adjust their sizing to be bigger. Commonly called vanity sizing, brands assumed that if a person could fit into a garment that was labeled with a size smaller than they were used to, they’d be more likely to buy the garment. An easy example of this is the Gap family of brands. Someone who can fit into a 8 at Old Navy will need a 10 at Gap and a 12 at Banana Republic¹.

Photo by Yasamine June on Unsplash

Guess who doesn’t have to worry about any of this hassle? Yup, you got it - men. Men can walk into a higher end store not worrying about the fit of something because they’ll find something that sorta fits and then the in house tailor will alter it to fit perfectly. Early in my career, I worked with cisgender men. I often worked with the same men’s salesperson at Nordstrom, and literally every pair of pants or suit a male client tried on, we’d look at each other and say, “oh, they’ll just take that in” or “oh, they’ll just let that out”. It was a no brainer because get this: 

Men’s clothes are made to be altered.

There is extra fabric built into the waist and seat and these areas can be easily let out or taken in. Most high end suit pants come unhemmed because, guess what? It’s accepted that no man has the exact same inseam as the next². 

Photo by Emmanuel Boldo on Unsplash

I’m pretty sure no man walked away from those shopping experiences wishing his body was different just so that it would fit clothes. As this creator says: 

“It’s a clear reminder that men’s bodies are allowed (and expected) to grow and change, while women’s are not.”

Unfortunately, with the decrease in the quality of clothing in the last few decades (thanks to the aforementioned deregulation), particularly in women’s clothing, every measure is taken to decrease production costs and no extra fabric is allotted for potential tailoring.

Even men may not be safe for much longer. Based on my brief experience working with male clients, even men’s clothing measurements are no longer standardized and a size 36 waist is no longer necessarily 36 inches. 

Clearly, clothing sizes are meaningless. Which, honestly, kindof makes sense. Every human body is so vastly unique in its shape and size and ratio of body parts compared to other body parts that no mass produced article of clothing will ever come close to fitting well. It’s wrong of us to assume that any will or for us to think that our body is the problem. The clothing is the problem.

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So what can we do to cover our bodies?

We truly only have a few options. The only sure fire way to get clothes that fit our own specific unique shapes and proportions is to make our own clothes, have someone else make our clothes, or buy mass produced clothes and have them altered to fit. Since those options aren’t easily available, most of us play what I call the fit lottery.  

Fit lottery /fitˈ lädərē/ noun; trying on as many items as you can and hoping that one or two will fit the dimensions of your unique body.

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

There are a few ways to get in the ballpark of your size, and they involve measurements and size charts (check out my shopping workshop and use code substack20 for 20% off to learn all of my shopping tips). Take your measurements (I have a how to video here and I also acknowledge that depending on your body story, this may not be an easy task) and compare them to a brand’s size chart. Usually, you will land somewhere in the vicinity of a couple of different sizes and I recommend ordering and trying both.

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Edited to add: a commenter noted that the allowable margin for acceptable finished garment variation is 2". That is, if you are making a size 10 and the waist is supposed to finish at 30", it's acceptable if it ends up between 29" and 31". The gradation between sizes is typically 2": if you look at a sizing chart, a lot of them will have size measurements that go 28", 30", 32", 34", etc.

So if the acceptable variation is 2" and the difference between sizing is 2" it's very possible to find that you fit into two of the exact same garment from the same company but one is a size 16 and one is a size 18, or whatever.³

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In my experience working with hundreds of humans, about 1 in 10 items someone tries on will actually work for them, their style, their needs, and their bodies. Read that again:

ONE out of every TEN items will work. 

So no more feeling like a failure when clothes don’t fit. It’s not your body, it’s just that sizing is a dumpster fire.

P.S. The asynchronous summer version of my group program, Making Space, is going swimmingly. I have more people in the group than ever before and the community is thriving. If you aren’t able to make weekly scheduled meetings, this version is the way to go. Make sure to get on the waitlist for the fall round.

 

1. I’ve always wondered how has no one has lobbied for this brand to change its name or even just pointed out the fact that the name is literally the definition of colonial imperialism and that it’s basically what we’re currently living in within our own country? Just things I think about 🤔

2. One of the top complaints I get about sizing is how to find pants that are the correct length. The answer is there are none! Unless you’re very tall, in which case, sorry, you’re fucked, you need to buy pants that fit most of the rest of your body and have the legs hemmed, and probably the rest of them altered.

3. This info comes from Kathleen Fasanella via Carol Kimball.