After years of fitting room meltdowns, H&M will make its British clothes bigger

FOR years it was criticised by shoppers who complained they had to buy clothes several sizes up to get the perfect fit.

And now H&M has finally caved, announcing it is making the size of its UK women’s clothes bigger.

Student lowri Byrne, 22, who wears a 12, last year wrote to the store to say she could ‘barely breathe’ in a dress labelled size 16.

And Ruth Clemens, 27, went viral on Facebook in 2016 when she posted a picture from a H&M changing room to the store’s page. The photo showed her struggling to get into a pair of size 16 jeans – despite being a size 14.

She asked the store: ‘ Why are you making jeans that are unrealistically small? Am I too fat for your everyday range?’ The post received 99,000 likes and 12,000 shares.

Another customer, Rebecca Parker, 25, wrote to the store last March after her own struggle to fit into H&M jeans despite going a size up.

She asked: ‘Why is it OK for a brand to label an item of clothing as a size which it clearly isn’t?’

Yesterday a H&M spokesman said: ‘We are taking the steps to change our womenswear measurements to be in line with UK sizing.’

It said the previous measurements and fit of a size 12 would now be the measurements of a size 10.

It was recently revealed that the reason so many customers find themselves buying larger sizes was due to the way UK sizing corresponds to european sizing. The spokesman

‘Psychological impact’

added: ‘The new sizing is in effect already in our stores and shortly will be online.’

In March last year, Marianne Gray, said she had to go up four sizes to a size 20 for a navy blue dress.

She told the retailer she was ‘utterly horrified’ and accused it of being out of touch with ordinary women.

She added: ‘I am relatively secure in my body, but I can only imagine the psychological impact being a size 20 could have on a young impressionable girl. I was quite upset myself.’