Know Everything About US Europe Clothing Sizing
If you have
ever despaired at finding the perfect fit – help is at hand.
Dress sizes -
it’s an emotive subject. Whether it’s a critical discussion
on the latest celebrity to achieve size zero or an article on the
merits of the perfect size 10, you can’t get away from it. But
ask any woman her opinion of clothes shopping on the high street and
it’s clear that dress sizes are far from perfect anything.
For many of us
the frustrating experience of finding we’re a size 14 in one
shop but a 16 in another, or even worse, hovering between two sizes
in the same shop, is all too common.
All of us shop
by the size we believe we are, or by the size we believe is right for
us. We’re increasingly wrong, it seems, as the size on the label
does not mean what we thought it did and once again it just
doesn’t fit.
If that sounds
familiar, you’re not alone. Two size 12s can differ by several
centimetres even in the same store and when you take American sizes,
European measurements and all the variation on small, medium and
large into account, then it’s little wonder that we women are
confused.
So what is
going on?
A clue is
perhaps in the term ‘dress size’. There haven’t been
any changes in sizing information in 50 years, when the majority of
women mainly wore dresses. Today we are just as likely to wear
trousers and separates, which need to fit better and hang well from
different places, depending on the look and the cut. And just think
how much has changed in 50 years; it’s a completely new world
today – our diet, our lifestyles, our attitudes to clothes are
re-shaping the population. But most clothes sizes just don’t
reflect these changes.
Hopefully,
things are about to change. Fed up of the increase in customer
complaints and the sheer scale and cost of unwanted returns, a few
far sighted retailers have recently completed a large scale analysis
of the size and shape of the UK population. It’s called SizeUK
and is the first sizing survey since the 1950’s. What’s
more it’s the very first time that the shape of the population
has been captured and analysed, as well as size.
Using 3D whole
body scanners on 10,000 people, this far-reaching survey has provided
a range of highly accurate measurements of the size we are today. It
has additionally broken down the information in to the shapes and
sizes we are at different times in our lives, providing invaluable
data for retailers and manufacturers to ensure their clothes fit
their own customers perfectly in all the right places. |
