Sizing Up Your Style

            While soliciting input from readers I’ve received several requests to do a post regarding finding the right sizes and fits for clothing. Women’s sizing can be difficult to decipher because there really isn’t much, if any, consistency. With variations between brands and body types you end up being a range of sizes, and potentially different sizes on the upper or lower halves of your body too! Not to fear though, we'll make sense of it all :)

Before we start, let’s take a moment and figure out our measurements (if you have a willing friend, measurements turn out better if take by another person):

Bust: measured around the largest section of your bust. If you regularly wear breast forms or heavily padded bras, be sure to wear them while measuring since you will likely be wearing them under your clothes.

Waist: measured around the narrowest part of your waist. This is a bit tricky because a women’s waistline is naturally a couple inches above her navel (take a look back at my post about bodylines and see where the waist line falls). This may not be the narrowest part of your waist, however it will be where the waist portion of clothing hits on your body and that is how the size is determined.

Hips: measured around the widest part of your hips. This should be relatively easy to find. If you use hip padding be sure to include that in the measurement as well. 

For the sake of example, my measurements come out to be 37-30-38 (eerily similar to my high school locker combination). Now that we’re measured let’s figure out our dress size:

            Dress size is a numbered scale from 0 to 16 (or higher, not sure where it stops). For adult clothing, these sizes are all even numbers; junior’s sizing is all odd numbers. This numbering scheme is used in general not only for sizing dresses, but also tops, skirts, pants and more. Below I’ve included a condensed version of the Amazon.com general women’s sizing chart as an example, and reasonable place to start.

The most important measurement to consider in finding dress size is your bust measurement because that it the area that a dress will fit around primarily. So, ignoring everything else and just using your bust measurement, find the corresponding size on the chart: I have a 37” bust so that makes me a size 10. If you are in between sizes, go with the closest larger size to your measurement. That wasn’t too bad, but lets look at the rest of the chart to make sure we get confused again. 

If you notice… the corresponding waist and hip measurements for a size 10 are 29” and 39.5” while my actual measurements are 30” and 38” … what gives? Size charts are based upon some archetypical female body shape, if you ever find a brand that you match all your measurements exactly to the size chart it is basically like hitting the lottery. Much like winning the lottery, that has never happened to me.

The lesson to be learned from this is that we need to determine which measurements are important depending on what type of clothing we are buying. An obvious example would be buying skirt or pants. You would not want to use your bust measurement to determine pant size! That’d just be silly. Looking at the chart again… my hips are 38” so that would put me between 6 & 8 for pants (I know from experience that I’m typically a 6). Note that I did not use my waist measurement for pants since a women’s waist is above her navel and that is not where I plan on wearing my pants. Probably a point of contention with some, but that has been my experience and has worked well for me. Skirts on the other hand tend to be worn higher and around your waist. Therefore, consider your waist measurement more in determining size.

For dresses and tops you may also see sizes simply listed as Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large with no numbers at all. On the size chart above you see these indicated by XS,S,M,L, and XL on the left for a range of sizes. Small is 4-6, Medium is 8-10, Large is 12-14 etc. It is tougher to ensure a good fit with these ranges and due to subtleties in our body shapes, we may not always come out where we expect. For example, I tend to be a large when it comes to this sort of thing even though a 10 falls into the medium category. I surmise that this is due to the fact that my upper body is “thicker” than a woman who is of similar height and measurements. With experience you will be able to figure out where you fall in the S-M-L scale.

To further add to the already dizzying confusion of sizing schemes, clothing can also be divided into specialty sizes such as misses, juniors, plus, petite, and tall. You have likely seen most of these sections in department stores. These categories are defined by the cut and tailoring of the clothes for different body shapes:

Misses - Cut to accommodate the curves found in the average adult women. Designated by even numbered sizes. 
Juniors - Cut to better fit typical body shapes of younger women (less curves). Designated by odd numbered sizes.
Plus - Cut to fit larger sized women. Designate by a "w" after the size.
Petite - Cut to fit shorter height women (5'3" or shorter). Designated with a "p" after the size.
Tall - Cut to fit taller women (5'9" and above). Designated with a "T" after the size.

Each of these categories will have it's own size charts, so if you feel your body shape falls into one of these categories, you may want to experiment with trying specialty sizes. However, even if you are a specialty size (I'm 5'10" so technically a Tall), you are by no means limited to shop only that sizing... I rarely shop the tall section since I can find clothes that fit well in the normal size schemes.

Being transgender puts a bit more of a twist on easily finding sizes since typically we are less curvy than the average woman. This is notable in our waist and hip measurements. In general, we have larger waists and smaller hips. The trick I’ve adopted to find the best fits is to take my waist, see what size that would be (a 12 on this chart) and take my hip size (an 8) and then split the difference between them, which puts me at a 10 (the size I’d arrive at using my bust measurement).

Each brand will have its own size charts, so check them with each item you buy until you learn your sizes in all your favorite brands. The best way to ensure a good fit is obviously to try something on, especially since size charts are not always readily available in stores, but shopping online (which I find happens more often with the transgender community due to anxieties about shopping in public) means relying on charts exclusively. If you’re uncertain online, order two sizes of the same item, try them on, and return the one that doesn’t fit (be sure to check the return policies first though!).

Summing up the important lessons:

1. Use sizing charts for each brand you shop, they will be different.
2. Use the most relevant measurement to determine your size:
   Dresses: Bust, then waist
   Tops: Bust
   Skirts: Waist, then Hips
   Pants/shorts: Hips, maybe waist
3. Be wary of the S-M-L sizing scheme, learn from experience what fits you best
4. Try things on, keep track of your sizes, don’t be afraid to try on multiple sizes

Discovering your sizes is a bit of a trial and error process, but with the things we discussed here you should be able to at least start off in the right ballpark. Happy shopping!