Stores are stitching us up over dress sizes
High Street investigation rev
WOMEN who struggle to squeeze into clothes fearing they have piled on the pounds can breathe a huge sigh of relief.
The changing room challenge may be less about weight and more to do with High Street sizing, which is all over the shop.
This can make shopping a chaotic, frustrating and exhausting experience but there is also the worry unrealistic sizing can convince healthy girls they are overweight.
I am a typical size 10 – with 34in bust, 28in waist and 36in hips – but trying on skinny jeans, fitted dresses and loose tops at eight High Street stores produced some staggering results.
The clothes that fitted ranged from an 8 to a 16.
In H&M I couldn’t zip up a size 10 black dress but a 16 fitted perfectly. By contrast, a 10 stripy dress in budget chain Primark fitted well while its 16 felt like a tent.
It was similar story when trying on tops. Marks & Spencer’s size 8 baby pink T-shirt fitted but I needed a 14 for an H&M black long-sleeved top.
So there was only a slim chance that skinny jeans would be a different story.
In Next, skinny black jeans a size 8 left me plenty of space for dinner but at New Look the same size wouldn’t get passed my thighs. Even a 12 was still a very snug fit.
Next door at River Island in Brighton, I could only squeeze into a 14 in jeans but a flowery long-sleeved top in 8 fitted like a glove. At Topshop and M&S a size 10 pair of skinny jeans slid on with ease.
Typical size 12 Marianne Gray, 29, with a 37-30-39 figure, had a similar experience buying a £24.99 fitted dress at H&M and nd taking it home to try on. She could barelyly get it past her knees. She took it back – andnd found a size 20 was “almost perfect”.
She posted a picture of herself in the dress ss in the changing room and commented: “I’mm relatively secure in my body but I can onlyly imagine the psychological impact being a size 20 could have on a young impressionable le girl. I was quite upset. I’m a 12 and you ou made me a 20.” She said she would not shop op at H&M again.
A OnePoll survey for the union GMB B found 92 per cent of women don’t fit into to the same size clothes but 82 per cent wanteded standardised sizing.
Fed up by the variation,n, computer programmer Annana Powell-Smith created website, e, What Size Am I?, which ch promises to tell women thehe size they really are in different nt High Street stores, using theireir bust, waist a nd hi p measurements.
Desired
TV psychologist Emmama Kenny said: “Don’t alloww sizing to dictate happiness. s. Society has made it desirablele to be a small 6 or 8 dress size. e.
“I did a study of body imagege and was staggered to find nd 20 per cent of women wouldld prefer to have heart problemsms if they could stay slim. This is the way we’re breeding our youngng girls – that small is healthy.”
A H&M spokesman said: “It’s only everer our intention to design and make clotheses that make our customers feel good about ut themselves. Any other outcome is neitherer intended nor desired. H& M’s sizes arere global.”
New Look declined to comment and nd a River Island spokesman said: “We don’t fit against other retailers but ut use models we believe best representative ve our customers.”