Go to a handful of different shops and youll probably find that youre a different size at each one – or at least, your regular size fits differently.
Many of us feel inadequate when our regular size doesnt fit (however body positive you may be).
Which is why mummy blogger Constance Hall, who is currently pregnant with her seventh child, has come up with a size down rule for her own clothing brand, Queen.
All that means is that the clothes are sized correctly – meaning that for many women, theyll fit better if they go down a size.
Size matters
In Australia, theres no official sizing system. The Australian Standard Size Coding Scheme for womens clothing was scrapped in 2008 – allowing retailers to develop their own sizing scale based on sales data.
So that means that you might be one size in one store, two sizes smaller in the one next door and one bigger at the next. Each fashion brand creates its own size system, based around their specific target market. So an extra large could mean a 12 (if the majority of that brands customers are waifs), or a size 24.
Brands often employ vanity sizing – creating sizes smaller than the usual size because we tend to have an emotional attachment to the number on the label. The average Australian woman has gained three kilos since 1995.
She says that the idea came to her last year when she was out shopping.
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I left my husband and kids in the car and I ran into one of my favourite clothing shops. I quickly tried on some things and bought nothing, she writes on Facebook.
I got back in the car and I asked my husband… “When you see me, do you see an extra large woman?”
He laughed and said: “Youre five foot three and petite.” So I asked the kid: “When you see me, do you see an extra large woman?” They too laughed.
In the clothing store, shed been trying on items labelled as extra large and when she asked the shop assistant if there were any clothes bigger than the extra large size, the assistant said: No sorry, they dont exist…extra large is the biggest.
Imagine not existing in half of the shops you walk past…You see I am not an extra large woman, there is nothing wrong with that but I am not, says Constance.
More: Fashion
And women who are bigger than me? They dont only exist, but they exist brightly and beautifully and they rock beautiful clothes, you just have to f***ing make them.
You may think you sized down to fit my clothes, I think you sized perfectly.
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