Last Friday morning a (male) colleague asked my friend what dress size she wears. Yes this was a random question but he had prefaced the question by asking her if he could ask a personal question and saying that of course she was free not to answer. I asked him why he wanted to know, as this might make my friend more inclined to give an answer, and he said that someone he knew had told him that they wore a certain size and he thought they looked about the same height and build as my friend so he wanted to make a comparison.
I immediately leapt to the defence of women in general and pointed out that someone can be the same weight and height as someone else, yet they might still be different dress sizes. And my friend pointed out that it depends what shop you are in as to what size you would wear (the day I wrote this I had on a size M top, with a size S top over it, and an XS sweater over that. Two of those items were from the same shop. Yes, H&M, I am looking at you and your ridiculously erratic sizing!). Equally, two people of very different height and weight can wear the same size clothing. My friend is probably 6 inches shorter than me and a different build, and yet we wear the same size clothes.
What is your experience of this? Do you find inconsistency in sizing across different (or even the same) brands? Does it bother you when you have to wear a different size to your usual one? Do you share a dress size with someone who looks has a completely different body shape to you?
It matters to me as (primarily) an online shopper. I tend to stick with the same brands much of the time as I know I can order easily online and get the right size first time. I don't have time to keep trekking to the PO for returns and don't get to town much as Elodie gets bored and I can't focus as much as I'd like on what's available! H&M are one of the worst, my burgundy trousers are a 10 - I took four pairs in to the fitting room, that pair, brown, blue and black, same trousers, same size. The burgundy were perfect, the others were a mishmash of way too big and far too small. I could never risk ordering their trousers online!
ReplyDeleteH&M are easily the worst store for sizing inconsistencies and I know what you mean about online shopping. I know my regular size from LTS will fit so would be far more inclined to buy online from there than from say Topshop where things can randomly come up small.
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