Clothing Sizes Are More Inconsistent Than Ever

Have you ever had a minor meltdown in a change room? Yup, me too. It happened when our research assistant, Sarah Mariotti, and I went to the mall to try on jeans. As part of FASHION’s ongoing series on how sexism influences the design of women’s clothing, we were comparing sizing among different brands.

The information was unexpectedly complicated and hard to find online, so we decided to actually go to a mall (yes, they still exist) and try on jeans from different retailers. Smash cut to two hours and nearly a dozen pairs of pants later and I was having a minor existential crisis. “Wait, is this actually my size?” I worried as I struggled with the button of a nastily tight pair. “Is there something wrong with me? Have I suddenly gained 20 pounds? Am I even wearing these pants correctly?”

Now that I’m free from the cramped four walls of the change room, I recognize that I was being ridiculous. But can you blame me? It’s been well documented that women’s sizes are about as consistent as Selena Gomez’s social media status. (Is she on or off Instagram? I can’t keep up!) Women can’t just pick up a garment without trying it on — a small at Old Navy can be a large at Zara, which can sometimes be a size 6 at H&M, and the list goes on and on.

So the questions have to be asked: Why is this still a thing in 2025? And is it true that men’s sizing is more consistent? FASHION put on our detective hats to find out.

What Do These Numbers Even Mean?

To get to the root of the problem, we went back — and I mean way back — to the beginning of mass-produced clothing. The first sizing systems were actually created for the military, for men fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War and the American Civil War. They offered a simple solution: Measure the circumference of a man’s chest, make assumptions about the rest of his proportions and then send him off. But it worked surprisingly well at the time, and these systems made their way to vendors across the United States and Europe.

Once women got word of this newfangled practice, they wanted in. (Taking a break from making their own garments was a nice bonus.) So what did retailers do? They used the men’s sizing system to create women’s clothes. Ultimately, it didn’t go great, and female shoppers returned to their sewing machines.

Decades passed before anyone re-attempted to address women’s sizing, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was tasked with providing measurements that could be used to improve the fit of women’s garments and patterns. From 1939 to 1940, the organization took the measurements of thousands of women across the country in the hope of getting an accurate account of the female form.

Using the data as a jumping-off point, the U.S. Department of Commerce and National Institute of Standards and Technology conducted their own study in 1949 and developed sizing standards for women, men and children. Released in 1958, their work became the first sizing standard to be officially recognized in the American garment industry. Women could choose from 32 sizes, ranging from 7 to 42, and young men from fewer than a dozen sizes, from 32 to 42.

I’m sure you can already see a few problems. For starters, going back to the original 1939 study on which women’s sizes were based, the USDA’s findings were pretty skewed. Like with most things during that time, women of colour were entirely excluded from the narrative so the measurements that were taken only reflected the proportions of white women. Also, to entice more volunteers, the USDA offered to pay all participants, which resulted in an influx of women with lower socio-economic status and, oftentimes, health struggles. All of this to say that the final measurements were smaller than the national average and resulted in a sizing system that was too small even by 1940s standards.

But after all of this data and the size designations were made available, most retailers ignored them. “They stuck to where they felt ‘their’ customer was,” says Lynn Boorady, department head and professor of design and merchandising at the College of Education and Human Sciences at Oklahoma State University.

This is where exclusionary fits and vanity sizing entered the equation. If a label wants to curate a certain demographic, it limits its sizing accordingly. “In the United States, we have sizing standards, not sizing requirements,” she adds. “This difference means that any company can determine what its size 8 means in terms of measurements.” It also opens the door to the use of ego-driven tactics designed to entice customers to make a purchase.

What’s Our Current Sizing System?

According to Boorady, the most popular sizing system in the United States for both men and women today is an international standard that was created by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) in 1982. She explains that, in essence, the ASTM took the data from the 1939 study and modernized it using body-scanning technology. It has since been updated by anthropometric specialists and major retail companies (like Walmart) who meet twice a year to blend the average measurements and use standardized grading to develop different sizes. This gives retailers the opportunity to constantly adapt their ranges to current figures. (Think of it like bringing a group of bakers together to update your great-grandma’s apple-pie recipe.)

But Marie-Eve Faust, a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal who has been studying subjects like size labelling and fitting since 2000, adds that vanity sizing has now rendered most women’s size labels meaningless.

Vanity sizing was introduced in the ’80s, and as Time put it in a 2014 story titled “The Bizarre History of Women’s Clothing Sizes,” “as American girth increased, so did egos.” Fewer and fewer brands followed government size guidelines and more began creating their own systems that preyed upon women’s self-esteem. So as women grew physically larger over time, retailers shifted their sizes to make shoppers feel smaller and skinnier. For example, a women’s size 14 in 1937 was equivalent to a size 8 in 1967, which was a size 0 in 2011. And we’ve only covered the United States. We haven’t even spoken about the differences between countries.

Multi-brand retailers like Hudson’s Bay, Ssense and Holt Renfrew carry designers from around the world, which can be a fashion lover’s nightmare. Marlo Sutton, a personal shopper and stylist at Holt Renfrew’s Bloor Street location in Toronto, feels that European brands are some of the worst offenders since French, Italian and German sizing all have their “nuances.” And because in many countries (including Canada) it isn’t mandatory to include exact measurements on garment tags, there is nothing stopping these companies from creating universal clothing chaos.

As Faust notes, sizing discrepancies still start in the pattern-drafting stage. Just one example: While size labels on men’s pants are written to reflect measurements, Boorady points out that a size 34 in men’s pants doesn’t mean the waistband measures 34 inches. To clarify, the label on men’s pants represents a man’s waist measurement, and men’s trousers are often made to sit on the upper hip. So during the pattern-drafting process, a basic pattern is made using a “size 34” block (which is based on assigned proportions) and then cut off at the hip line. Thus, the actual circumference of the garment would be larger than 34 inches.

I Volunteered as Tribute

To prove just how unhinged sizing has truly become, FASHION did two experiments. First, we compared both women’s and men’s jean measurements digitally, and then we went on a field trip to the mall to see the differences IRL.

For women’s jeans, we looked online at three styles per brand (in this case, straight-cut mid-rise) in a size 12, across five popular retailers. And when I say it felt like we were trying to solve the Da Vinci Code, it’s not that much of an exaggeration. Some brands post a pants sizing chart in women’s. Others don’t include exact numbers but, rather, a large range assigned to each size. And for a couple of the others, measurements were nowhere to be found.

Determined to get some answers, we analyzed three pairs of jeans at three different stores in person to get a better understanding of a women’s size 10 and a men’s size 32. To make sure our measurements were accurate, we got out a good old-fashioned measuring tape and noted the circumference of the waistband of the mid-rise styles literally in-store (our apologies to the salespeople).

As the real-time fit model (remember the existential crisis?), I can personally attest to just how drastically each pair varied. Of the jeans I tried on, the waistband ranged from 32.5 inches to 36 inches. That’s almost a four-inch difference — more than enough for a pair of pants to practically fall to my ankles or suck the life out of my stomach.

Frustratingly, in all of the men’s size 32 jeans we measured (a total of nine pairs), the waistband ranged from 33.5 inches to 35 inches — a 1.5-inch difference, or the difference between before and after dinner. Hardly noteworthy.

And if you thought that sizing was consistent within the brands themselves, think again. During our fact-finding mission, Mariotti and I discovered that of the brands we analyzed, Zara’s women’s sizes had the biggest discrepancy. In the three pairs of mid-rise jeans I tried on, there was a three-inch difference in the waistband of each style. However, when we looked at the men’s side, the measurements of the size 32 jeans only had a difference of about 0.5 inches. We reached out to Zara for comment but never heard back.

Has Anyone Even Tried to Fix It?

Naturally, all of this information raises the question “Is there any hope of sizing salvation?” Well, yes and no.

In her 25 years as a contract lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Fashion, Pui Yee Chau has seen many, many changes in the curriculum, including sizing updates every five to 10 years. “The standard size has gotten bigger, and we’ve seen a slow move to inclusive and gender-fluid sizing,” she says.

Boorady also points out that the fashion industry has been trying to find a solution for almost 100 years and our current system is the best we can come up with, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. But she does believe that brands actually want to find a solution — not out of the goodness of their hearts but because retailers are actually losing hundreds of billions of dollars every year to returns.

Many academics have even been so bold as to declare creating a universal sizing system as nearly impossible, and Kathleen Fasanella, an apparel-industry pattern maker with 40 years of experience, even told Vox in 2019: “We’re not going to be able to standardize sizes until people’s bodies are standard, and they’re not. Sizes are a social construct.”

But mass-manufactured clothing isn’t going anywhere, so there has to be a better way.

Enter AI — it has more functions than just creating glam filters on TikTok! Companies like True Fit and Kiwi Sizing — which compile measurements from thousands of labels and then recommend your size based on those findings and a short survey — are now being used by thousands of brands. Also trying to start a retail revolution are Amazon, which recently developed its own sizing algorithm; Google, which launched its own AI-powered sizing tools in 2023; and Walmart, which purchased the virtual-fitting-room start-up Zeekit.

Remember: You Are Not the Problem

All this to say that you shouldn’t be singing the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” any time soon. You are not the problem; it’s brands and their outdated systems.

Also, they’re purposefully messing with us, if not through vanity sizing, which inflates our self-worth, then through “humility sizing” — a term coined by fashion psychologist Shakaila Forbes-Bell that describes how some retailers make their sizes smaller than normal to humiliate us and make us feel worse about ourselves. And as proven by a study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, it works! Some vulnerable shoppers feel the need to overcompensate for their hurt egos by buying more from the store that hurt them to prove a point.

This toxic cycle has to stop. Sutton suggests shopping with someone you trust, like a personal shopper. “They can help you understand different styles and what works best for your body type,” she says. “Additionally, they’ll know which brands tend to run smaller or larger, making it easier for you to find the perfect fit.”

Also, we need to collectively work on our self-esteem. Consider this an exercise in group therapy. You wouldn’t let a romantic partner have so much control over how you view your body, so why are you letting an anonymous pattern drafter? Forgive the sentimentality, but you are beautiful, no matter what number your jeans say.

Ditch the labels and stick to measurements; invest in a measuring tape and know your numbers. It will not only help you find better-fitting jeans but also reiterate the fact that sizes aren’t just about actual body size; they’re also about proportions, height and weight distribution — all the things that make you unique and impossible to replicate in some generic chart. No more existential crises allowed.

Research assistance by Sarah Mariotti

FASHION supports and encourages all gender identities to shop in any section, but for the purpose of this feature, we’re using retailers’ categorization of men’s and women’s clothing.

During the Spring of 2024, FASHION’S team examined the sizing of five mass-market clothing labels online to compare the measurements between similar jeans in the men’s and women’s departments. We extended our research to include in-person measurements of three mass-market clothing labels as well as eight different women’s jeans styles and nine different men’s. We considered human discrepancies in the measurements between men’s and women’s offerings.

This article first appeared in FASHION’s September 2024 issue. Find out more here.