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.
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 …
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