Letter to Marks and Spencer

[lnr]

Dear sir/madam,

I'm writing because I am confused about your sizing.  At the moment I
mostly wear a size 22, and have been buying clothes from your normal
range.  However having gained a little weight I was thinking of trying
some 24s and seeing if they fit better.

As size 24 is quite large this means that there are fewer items
available in your normal range and more in your plus range.  However
when I check my measurements against your plus range I find that the
same measurements which are a 24 in the normal range would make me more
like a 28 in your plus range - and this is a change in all three
measurements so cannot simply be explained only by the differences in
the shape of clothes for larger women.

I have taken this snapshot of both size charts side-by-side for easier
comparison:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~eleanorb/temp/marks-sizes.gif

Can you explain this discrepancy?  Which size should I order?

Yours confusedly,
Eleanor Blair

NB: I actually sent this to them using the contact form on their webpages, rather than just posting it here and hoping they'd see it :-)

Comments

[the-local-echo.livejournal.com]

That's not a Plus range, that's a Minus range!
How odd!

[lnr]

Many of the clothes in their normal range aren't available past size 22, and if you look you can see the plus range does allow for larger waists compared to hip/bust, which is probably useful for some women (including me), but yes I have to go up 2 dress sizes to get the same waist!

[the-local-echo.livejournal.com]

Yes. It seems backwards to me - I would expect the same numbered size in a Plus range to be either the same or larger.

I believe the typical measurements associated with a size 10,12 etc has gone up over the years - vanity sizing - perhaps M&S have been doing that in their main range but not in their Plus range, so they've got out of sync.

[lnr]

That would make perfect sense, except for the fact the plus range has only been introduced at all in the last couple of years. It's all rather weird!

[karen2205]

Yeah, I noticed this a little while ago, when pondering ordering some things in a 24 because particular styles in a 22 didn't fit, but failed to have the wherewithall to do anything sensible like ask them about it.

[angua.livejournal.com]

Boo! I've just ordered some things online in a size 24 hoping they'd fit. Looks like I'll be making some returns then.

[lnr]

It all depends on which range they're from. And probably a bit on how much extra ease there is in plus-size stuff.

[lnr]

Did you have any luck?

[angua.livejournal.com]

I did! I had to return the blouse because it was a bit too gaping but the other tops were fine and a nice length.

[lnr]

Cool!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, huh. That's weird. I'm not surprised the sizes seem arbitrary and confusing, that seems unfortunate but de rigeur for women's clothing.

But I'm used the discrepancy going the other way, to cater for people who want larger clothes, and so shop from the "plus" range, but would rather they had a smaller size number appended. Maybe there really is a conspiracy to make large people feel awful? But it seems a pathetic attack, and I still can't see why there should be such a thing :)

[sparrowsion]

It looks like M&S are having a concerted campaign to discourage larger shoppers, if you combine this with the cup tax.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Now I have a horrible and surreal vision of the government with 22% cuttings off millions of plus-size bras, and wondering what to do with them... :)

[lnr]

Making us feel awful is supposed to encourage us to lose weight and therefore be healthy and stop making other people have to look at us. </cynical>

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

But that's the thing. That's so plainly ineffective, even if there were a conspiracy, I can't imagine it being subtle enough to do something like deliberately messing with clothing sizes, whilst dumb enough to take this route.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

That's awful!

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

(a) Why don't people just use inches (or, of course, centimetres) ?
(b) Remember when computers were going to mean we all had tailor made clothes run up for us in half an hour or so? Where's my jetpack?
(b addendum) Actually I helped a guy who was developing software to tailormake shoes once, years ago. Haven't noticed that come to market, either.

[lnr]

a) well that's why I was looking at the size charts innit.

Oddly I could get the plus-size one to display in inches *or* cm but the general one only came in cm.

Not that just being in inches helps much in buying clothes if you don't know the give in the fabric and a bunch of other factors which influence which figures to compromise on if you don't match all three measurements at the same time.

[caramel-betty.livejournal.com]

I think he was saying "Why do invent random sizes that don't actually seem to be understandable, when you could just say how big your waist/bust/foot is in inches/cm?"

If he wasn't, I've often wondered about this. I don't get the whole thing with shoe sizes, anyway.

[lnr]

Perhaps it's partly because you can just say '22' on the label for a pair of trousers rather than 'Waist: 42"' or 'Hips: 50"', especially given the range of waist sizes and hip sizes overlaps by quite a bit in the middle.

Less of a problem with tops and feet than with trousers and dresses.

I guess the nice thing about the number system is that theoretically if you're fairly normally proportioned you can just remember one number, rather than having to remember one number for tops and another number for trousers. Of course this falls down when people come in quite such a variety of shapes, but in my case I do in fact wear approximately a 22 on both.

[lnr]

Oh, and if trousers were typically labeled by hip size then I'd probably always have to wear the next size up (if not two sizes) from my *actual* hip size because I have a proportionally large waist.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

(a) because that would be some sort of implicit admission that women can use numbers as numbers

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Did they ever get back to you?

[lnr]

Actually no, they didn't. Which is irritating. I'm wondering if I can be bothered enough to chase them up on it.