Is it just me, or does fashion not fit anymore?

Are we all just fashion misfits, or being failed by fashion itself?

Ooh, suits you…?

Whilst many of our readers are incredibly stylish, when it comes to buying our clothes most of us are not regulars at Savile Row. So, acquiring a made to measure bespoke suit, from upwards of £3,500, isn’t in many of our budgets.

Instead – often due to the socioeconomic class we live in – we are left with the only options of having to buy environmentally-damaging fast fashion, use outlets that are huge corporate giants like Next, or going to secondhand sites like Vinted or local charity shops. And while these sites and options can be incredibly helpful and better for the environment, for women there’s still a much bigger issue to be addressed.

None of it really fits us.

So I like many other women who have experienced the fluctuations of different sizes over the years (yes it happens to all shapes and sizes) continue to struggle to find sizes that actually fit. And whether it be due to health, pregnancy, or menopause our bodies will continue to change as women. Yet for some reason this still, according to UK fashion retailers, isn’t on trend.

Where did you get that from…?

I was trying to work out if I was just a fashion misfit due to my own bafflement of going from a size 4 to then a size 10 in a matter of three years – with only a 5kg weight gain. So, I reached for the tape measure and tried to find firstly a UK national size guide, and secondly find what size I was.

But to my surprise there wasn’t one.

Instead, I discovered that there was no standard sizing for fashion in the UK, not only for woman but for men and children too.

It appears that each individual brand determines its own size chart. With woman’s clothing – specifically brands – using their own-fit models to target particular body types, completely lacking a standardised sizing system.

So, I finally had my answer: this was why I and so many others are different sizes in different shops. For example, I’m an 8 in Boohoo, a 10 in Primark, but a 6 in some Next clothing.

I wasn’t a fashion misfit, fashion misfitted me and every other man, woman, non-binary person, and child who didn’t fit the “norm” they were trying to create – regardless of body shape variations and proportions.

With the fashion industry making around £85.85 billion in 2024, surely the issue of standardised sizing needs to become a new trend, right? But of course there is a much bigger issue here, too.

Where does all this fast fashion end up?

That’s so not on trend…?

As the Independent reported, a survey in 2023 stated that incorrect sizing was the reason for 93% of online clothes returns – with overall, nearly half of all clothes bought on the internet sent back. This is obviously having a huge effect on the environment.

This is having a global effect. The excess waste from the global north is ending up in the Global South. For example, this is at a rate of 25 tons on a weekly basis in Jamestown beach, Accra in Ghana. That’s just one beach:

 

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Along with the damage of the carbon footprint from this fast fashion as well as worker exploitation, modern slavery, and every other corporate crime you can think of, incorrect sizing is also causing damage to the buyers self esteem.

With many retailers not offering sizes suitable for a wide range of body types and other fashion retailers choosing to adopt “vanity sizing” (marking up or down their sizes), they leave their customers believing a false sense of size or ideal.

This is done purely to fit a Western, capitalist beauty ideal that quite frankly doesn’t fit any of us properly. Well, not in the real world anyway.

Fast fashion is harming us all

So along with increased returns, a damaged environment, harmed self esteem, and the knowledge that this is based on historical factors of early sizing that favoured a specific body type in Western ideals, what can we do?

Well, apart from making our own clothes, very little. Until retailers get together and start using customer data to finally offer a range of standardised women’s, men’s and children’s clothes sizes that better suit different body types, we are unfortunately left complicit in the mess that is our fast fashion world.

Featured image via the Canary