I’m doing that seasonal thing: packing up summer clothes and pulling out my fall and winter clothes. As I’m organizing my skirts, I notice that — in my particular scheme of color organizing — that three cute, mid-thigh J Crew skirts are all in a row together. And then my brain starts ticking. Hey, thinks me, one of those skirts is a size 6 and one is a size 2. I check. The third skirt is a size 4. They all fit just fine.
Now, men, mind you: these are three skirts from the same store/brand. And these are three skirts with very similar cuts. And yet, somehow, three different sizes — 2, 4 and 6 — fit me. I don’t get it. I can’t fathom clothing manufacturers could get away with this inefficiency with men, but somehow it’s ok in the women’s world of clothing. Whatever.
Perhaps, dear Men of the World, you’ll extend some sympathy to us women for our confusion here and there about sizes and bodies and fashion and image. While said confusion can stem from many a source — and let’s not forget those hormonal fluctuations — I have to think that the careless sizing of manufactured clothing plays, at least, a small part in all this.
8 Comments
October 16, 2009 at 8:49 am
Mens’ clothing simply measures everything in inches. I get the feeling that would be an anathema to many women.
It is super efficient to be able to walk into an Old Navy and just grab the first few sets of 30×32 jeans and fall color slacks that I encounter.
October 16, 2009 at 8:59 am
Well said, Jessie. And to top that off, for larger sizes, I was reading somewhere, a few months ago… that some clothing designers will be taking a standard (not that there is a standard size these days) size 14, for example, and labeling it a 12. So, the size would stay the same, but the number would change. This decision followed a study that determined that women were more likely to buy clothing items if the numbers indicated smaller sizes. Everything is so manipulated by the clothing marketers and how much they can play on people’s insecurities.
October 16, 2009 at 10:40 am
Jessie, you seem to be implying that women’s “confusion … about sizes and bodies and fashion and image” is being driven in part by “careless sizing of manufactured clothing”. As Jen Sardam notes, it’s not necessarily “careless” at all, and the causation seems in part to go the other way. In other words, womens’ issues around body size and image are driving manufacturers to engage in games around how women’s clothes are labeled in terms of size. Sort of a self-reinforcing cycle, seems to me.
October 16, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Oh, the men are right. Jen, too, of course. Frank, logical as always. Rob, ditto.
I also have a size 12 skirt. It’s vintage. So, my winter wardrobe includes size 2, 4, 6 and 12 skirts. Mercy!
October 16, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I want inches!
October 16, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I want inches, too! Errg, did I just say that in public?
October 17, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Jessie, from what I have learned in one year of selling clothing at Nordstrom , and later on to be the Manager, in the Mens casual clothing department, a man’s confidence in his body and his attention to detail are directly correlated to his quality of dress and attire. The majority of men usually have their wives, daughters, sisters, or mothers choose clothes for him because these men do not have a clue about how clothing is supposed to ‘fit.’ Once a person can become comfortable in the clothes they wear, which also “fit well,” they may, perhaps, observe how clothes fit on others.
October 19, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I freely admit it: I did not know this. Isn’t most clothing designed by women?