Vanity Sizing

I know that I always make sure to stay in a size 8 or 6 - I do not want to wear double digits.

The fact that sizing is not consistent is a pain! I NEVER order clothing from catalogs or online because I am unsure whether the merchant's size 8 is really a 10 or a true 8.

Women's clothing manufacturers are THE worst! No two size 6's or size 4's or size 8's are the same, which makes ordering clothes almost impossible. On the other hand, I think men's clothing has been constructed the same for centuries - by waist and inseam, for example. My husband is 6'4" and yet he can order just about anything and it'll fit! And women's clothing manufacturers get away with it BECAUSE of the perceived obsession with size. I don't think us average citizens (I'm really not shedding any tears over the women spending $5000 on a dress, are you?) are so much obsessed with our clothing labes that we wouldn't trade it for some consistency. I would love to know that ANY outfit I bought in my size is going to fit. Period.

This bothers the living you-know-what out of me. I have size 12 pants in my closet from 10 years ago that fit perfect, but now size 12 pants that I buy today are too big. It's so dumb, and it completely feeds into our size-obsessed culture. All that talk about how Marilyn Monroe was a size 14, so feel good about yourself? A size 14 today and a size 14 back in her day are two totally different things now.

Size 00 isn't new--other stores have it. But just because they call it 00 doesn't mean it's small. It just means that for the particular line they needed to accommodate a smaller size. My wife wears anything from 0 to 6, depending on the brand, but we found a 00 blouse last year that was clearly too big for her. It's just that the store's normal clientele (and thus its size range) was, ahem, larger.

Rather than looking at the size, it's more useful to actually measure the garment. For instance, flatten a blouse and measure the width at the bottom of the armscye.

Even within the same store the sizes are crazy. I remember when I was about 145lb I walked out of a store (not a dept one that sells many brands, one that sells a single brand) with 2 a-line skirts, one was a 2 and one was a 10. Same store, same day, same cut skirts. At that weight, I was neither a 10 nor a 2, though the 10 was less crazy cause I was usually an 8.

Last week I got a size 2 skirt that is baggy and needs to be taken in, and the jacket to match in a size 10. I'm clearly smaller on top than on the bottom, but this store likes to vanity size just the bottoms, so that pear-shaped women feel better. I'm a 6, sometimes 4 now.

To be honest I don’t know my size because all of the sizing problems. I would rather have honesty and have something that looks good. Also body type has a lot to do with it as well. I am a bigger size than people who weigh more than I do because of hight and bone structure.

In New Zealand manufacturers have changed the grading on clothing to accommodate what they describe as the changing shape of women. They are larger by up to 2" in all the major measurements with extra width in the hips due to the increasing circumference of hips and bottoms. More women have pear shaped figures than ever before!

I agree with the commenters above. Women's clothing needs to be using actual measurements! The sizes mean nothing because they are established out of thin air. There should be a revolution to make manufacturers create standard sizes.

Well im dont i'll ever be a size 0, but so many shops have the wrong size on clothes. Just when you're clothes a finally lose, you want to buy new one's (a smaller size) they dont fit! You go the next shop they do..... What's going? doesnt every shop measure their colthes the same?
Im 5 foot 2 and about 117lbs. im too short to be a model, and not as pretty.. But still, why does the media make models who are are thin as those starving in the developing counties look so ''good''???... WHY DONT THEY JUST BE REALISTIC!!!
I mean yes there are many thin girls out there but majority are size 8-12...

We as consumers don't drive the trends in fashion at all, do we? Aren't WE driven by the designers when it's all said and done?

The inconsistency in sizing is extremely annoying when it comes to womenswear, and of course designers are enjoying the financial benefit of padding ladies' fragile egos when it comes to our weight. However, if I may point something out, the truth is that no matter what the tag in your pants says, the mirror is not going to say anything different. Your health isn't going to say anything different. The splitting seam running from your waistband to your crotch is not going to say anything different.

Annoying, yes. But instead of whining about more reasons why society is trying to "trick" us into lying to ourselves about the condition of our bodies, why not just cut the tag out to begin with? I'm also going to note that things like height, bone structure and muscle tone as well as clothing cut make such a difference in numeric size.

No one is really kidding themselves here. Do you really feel better about yourself because you can put on a billowy Talbot's size 8 you know is cut to make you pat yourself on the back? If I personally was in that position, I would prefer to zip myself into a size 12 pair of Armani trousers and know my confident ass looks smaller in something chic and well-cut.

I can't stand vanity sizing. It makes it extremely hard to find decent clothes that fit correctly. I usually pull on size 4 pants (smallest they usually carry in misses' sizes) only to find they are extremely baggy and make me look fat. So I have to put on ridiculously low cut juniors' size 0-2's that don't flatter me either. I really wish they'd size clothes by measurements and not by whatever criteria they do use. My husband can walk into any store and go find a pair of 34/34's and know they'll fit. I wish I could do the same.

Dressmaker's sizes are still non-vanity sizes though. When my sister had her bridesmaid's dresses made, we picked out the pattern and the regular sizes went from 2-12. According to the measurements, I was a 6, not a 0. My sister's friend was a 22 and normally she wears a 16 or so, so we had to get the plus-size pattern as well.
But hey, the dresses fit and looked good, so I didn't really care what size it was.

But you'll always have people out there like my aunt, who for a long time, refused to go above a size 14. She would SQUEEZE her size 20 body into size 14 dresses, making her look just awful. Everyone knew what she was doing, she wasn't fooling anyone but herself.

I'm a former plus sizer and have lost 100+ lbs. One of the only good things about being plus sized is that once I knew my size, that size always fit, no matter what it was. Plus sizing is pretty consistent; I guess the plus size designers don't bother to vanity size. When I was in plus sizes, I could order from catalogs, from TV or online. I could buy clothes off the rack without trying them on (when you wear a size 22, you hate to try clothes on, it is a true ordeal). But, now that I am 100 lbs lighter, I'm sometimes an 8, sometimes a 10, sometimes a 12 and even sometimes a 14. The times I've ordered from catalogs, I've had to return the things most of the time because they don't fit. Yesterday I was in Macy's -- I bought a size 8 coat and a size 10 pantsuit but I couldn't fit into another maker's size 12. And, yes, I was unwilling to put on a 14 just to buy that one outfit -- I worked too hard to get down in the sizes. That's not vanity, that's survival!

Nothing to lose, I'm with you. What matters is what the mirror tells you, not a tag.

Spectra, the largest size here in regular stores is 10, sometimes 8. Since we have a ton of women who'd need 12, 14, and 16, we see a lot of people spilling out of their clothes in ways that frankly look painful to me, like your aunt. I find it awful. Just buy something bigger, sheesh.

Maggie, I personally don't care that I just had to buy a 10 on a jacket, I size I wore on my top when I was around 30lb heavier. My size 10 jacket fits and looks great, and that is all that matters to me.

I think a lot of heavier women feel that they sweated blood to lose the weight and get down past a certain size, and they never want to wear it again. Given the known variation in women's sizes, it may be irrational -- it makes a lot of sense to say "ignore the tag, it's the fit that counts" -- but once you fit into a 12 when you used to be a 22, it's a crushing blow to have to put on an 18 again, even if you know you haven't regained a pound. Other people judge, too -- which is the reason I cut the tags out of blazers and sweaters. I don't want to leave something lying over the back of a chair for anyone else to inspect. My business, and if it fits, I'm happy. But someone else might not be.