Size Integrity

The number one annoyance I face when helping customer is answering there sizing questions. Do your pants run big? If I am a 6 at Express what size am I here? While I can only try my best to answer these questions in all honesty there is no standard right answer to the question of what size a client is. During this past holiday season I was confronted with this similar question and answered to my best ability that in general I thought the pants in question ran true to size as far as our store's standards. After hearing my answer our store merchandiser David pulled me aside to vent his frustrations on the issue of size integrity. His rants are always comical but this one stuck with me and made me question the issue. Why doesn't every brand follow a similar sizing guide? Did they ever? Why is Size Integrity such an issue? In the following post I hope to share with my research and conclusions about the issue.It is a well known fact that clothing sizes have changed throughout time. Evidence of this can be found on old clothing patterns and vintage clothing. For example this pattern I found listed the measurements for a size 12 as waist 25 and hip 33. That is quite different from today when a size 12 (which is the most common dress size in the USA) is somewhere around waist 30 and hip 32. The reason for this change is probably best summed up as vanity. Everyone wants to be a size 0 (well today more like 00) and to encourage women to buy, designers had to make clothes seem smaller. As much as this is troubling, hiding American obesity, and promoting unhealthy images I have to say I understand. I like being a size 4 when something in that size doesn't fit me I don't buy it. Changing the sizes for that reason was a brilliant marketing plan. The problem is that I fear it greatly contributed to todays issue of integrity. With sizes being changed the standard went out the window. Lynn Grefe, CEO of the National Eating Disorder Association claims, “Clearly there’s a psychological piece to clothing size. Sadly, people believe that you are your size, that the size is a reflection of how good you are or how successful you are.”American's vanity is not something I care to touch on but I felt I needed to give a brief history before I dug into the details. In the 1980's the US Standard sizes where changed into what is now officially the US catalog sizes in which we are all more familiar with today. The popular press reports expensive clothes tend to run large and there is inconsistency within each size category. I read a study by UNT Assistant Professor Tammy Kinley, where she compared a large sample of pants in the same size. She found not only that expensive clothes where bigger but also the more recognizable the brand the bigger the clothes. Also in her study she claimed that the biggest problem this causes is that people return clothing more often because the size is incorrect.Basically my summary to the problem is that poor sizing integrity is the chain reaction response of consumer vanity. Consumers pushed designers to make clothes seem smaller to increase sales. Naturally those companies with more expensive clothes and bigger names had the funds and the need to be the best at this. Hopefully in the future designers can agree on some sort of standard but retailing is competitive so the problem will most likely continue. Maybe now when a customer asks me if our clothes run big I'll ask them how expensive the clothes they buy usually are. No, I'm totally kidding that would be rude but I feel now that I am enlightened about the issue I must pass on my findings to at least the next customer that asks me my least favorite question.