WOMEN'S CLOTHING Lack of standard sizes causes fits

Women's sizes are all over the place. You could be a size 8 in one brand but a 12 in another.
By EILS LOTOZO
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
A strange thing happened to me at the Target store in Cherry Hill, N.J., a couple of weeks ago: I tried on a skirt in a size small, and it fit.
Small is not how many people would describe my healthy 5-foot-6, 147-pound figure. Heck, the last time I was anything resembling small was in high school -- during the Nixon administration.
So what did that little "S" on the label signify? Merely something American women have been observing for years: Women's clothing sizes are so wildly inconsistent that they're practically meaningless.
Men can buy a shirt or a suit that corresponds to their actual measurements. But in the surreal world of women's wear, size is a fluid concept. One manufacturer's size 8 may be bigger than another's 12. One designer's small might not be small at all and another's large may be minuscule.
Multiple sizes
The peculiar result is that most American women have no idea what size they really are.
It has gotten so nutty that new services have popped up to help women. At http://fitme.com you can plug in your measurements and find out what size will fit you in more than 400 clothing brands.
It drives women crazy, but when it comes to sizes, "manufacturers can do anything they want," said Sirvart Mellian, who chairs a committee on apparel sizing for the American Society for Testing and Materials in Conshohocken, Pa., which develops industry standards.
Using standards
Six years ago, Mellian's group tried to cut through the chaos. It surveyed measurements used by garment-makers and came up with standards. According to its chart, a size 10 should fit a woman with a 36-inch bust, a 28-inch waist, and 38 1/2-inch hips. A size 12 should fit a woman with a 371/2-inch bust, a 291/2-inch waist, and 40-inch hips.
But the standards are voluntary and few companies have adopted them, acknowledged Mellian, who works for the Navy.
Chris Mordi, a spokesman for catalog retailer Lands' End, said, "Lands' End starts with the ASTM numbers, but then the sizes get tweaked, based on research about our customers."
That's one reason clothing sizes are all over the map. Manufacturers all have their own ideas about who their ideal customer is, and most designers base their sizing on her -- what's known in the industry as a fit model.
The label illusion
There's another wild card.
Observed Mel Wiener, director of the fashion apparel studies program at Philadelphia University, "We also use that size label to make you feel better."
He's talking about the escalating practice of vanity sizing -- putting a smaller-size label on a bigger-size garment.
Every woman has encountered it. Even as we've put on the pounds over the years, we've seen our size magically decrease. That's why a size 10 pair of pants at Express offers me room to spare, though my measurements match the ASTM size 12.
Manufacturers do it because they believe it sells clothes, said Marshal Cohen, copresident of the marketing company NPD Fashionworld. "I've watched women shop and heard them say, 'Oh, I'm a 6 in this -- I love this brand,'" Cohen said.
Women's clothing chain Chico's has become a success story by ditching double-digits and making up its own sizing system, offering mostly loose-fitting knit garments with elastic waistbands in sizes 0 to 3. Mori MacKenzie, a senior vice president, said, "A size 16 loves us. At our store she's a 3."
Sure, we buy the stuff. But we're not fooled.
Measurements count
As for designers' and manufacturers' insistence that size-obsessed American women would never want to see their measurements broadcast on a tag, Mellian says baloney.
"Our weight is right there on the package when we buy panty hose, and we don't complain when we buy our bras by our bust size," Mellian said. Thanks to her efforts, the Navy now lists measurements on the size tags of women's uniforms. "If men can buy their pants by their waist size, why can't we?"
"The apparel industry is probably the slowest at adapting to consumer research," said Cohen, of NPD Fashionworld. "We have a questionnaire that goes to maybe a million people. And the consensus is, shopping is a chore.
"I think women are starting to get frustrated enough, they would welcome a change."