Vanity or Insanity Sizing?

Size 14 in 1950s

Vanity sizing is the trend of ready-to-wear clothing, with the same size becoming larger over time. Has it finally hit the lingerie department? 

It’s common practice for companies not to follow standard size charts, when working as a designer for UK high street stores for example, the pattern used for the Next customer, differed from the pattern used for the Topshop customer. Each company had their own size chart in which they thought portrayed their customer. But is this size becoming bigger over the years? Is this just a move with the times or is it because the standards of female beauty are considerably higher and more inflexible with smaller clothes sizes becoming an obsession, an irrational addiction to becoming tiny?

​Size 14 in 2010s

For information about the sizing practise in Lingerie see The anatomy of the bra

Maybe the industry is doing us a favour, by independently changing the sizing charts. Research tells us that out of 6000 women only 8% had a hourglass figure like the of Sophia Loren (when the standard size charts first appeared). With no standardization in the industry technically sizes then don’t exist, and retailers can put any size they think relevant on the labels of their lingerie. The problem is that size does exist – in our minds. The question is where will the size charts lead us in another 20-30 years?