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

[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.