Fashion Frenzy and Fuzzy

When we are selecting clothing to try on in a store, one of the first things we do is to find garments in our size and we do this by looking at the label sewn into the clothing for guidance. So called plus size women are sometimes put off when they look at a label that says XXL because it implies they are fat when in reality they may not be as large as they think they are. The clothing size label is not always a reliable indicator of whether a garment will fit a person properly or not, and while you may not necessarily want to dismiss clothing size labels outright, it is a good idea to view them with a degree of scepticism.
So why shouldn't you take garment sizing at face value especially since it seems to be such an important part of selecting clothing. Well, first of all, because garment sizing is not the same the world over. A 'medium' in one country may not be exactly the same in another because standard physiques tend to differ from country to country. Therefore, when trying on imported clothing you should not be surprised to find that it does not fit and you have to take either a larger or a smaller size.
You may also find that garment dimensions differ slightly from manufacturer to manufacturer and from retailer to retailer. You can try on a medium-sized jacket in one store and then go to another shop and try on the exact same size jacket and find that it fits you better or worse than the previous one. This happens for two reasons and is related more to fit than to size. The cut, and hence the fit, of a jacket is likely to differ from retailer to retailer because they have been made by different manufacturers, and manufacturers tend to work off their own standard sets of dimensions. It is simply not possible for manufacturers to create ready-to-wear garments that cater to all the different human body types so they normally pick a standard combination of dimensions and work according to that.
You may also find that a garment is not even labelled 'small', 'medium' or 'large', for instance, but rather 'size 1', 'size 2' and 'size 3', although this is not as common as another numeric numbering systems of sizing that many countries use where '10' is on the smaller side of '12' than '14', for example. With this system you really need a sizing conversion card because these numbers are attached to totally different sizes in different countries. It is common to find the same size garment to be labelled '10' in the US, '12' in the UK, and '40' in Europe!
For more information about plus size clothes visit the website http://www.fashionink.co.za/.
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