Zara Needs To Grow Up
I’ve come across a couple posts today (surprisingly “old” ones published back in March and August), discussing Zara’s size charts and the fact that their clothes seem to fit a couple sizes too small. So I decided to check it out for myself, and found myself once again perturbed with unregulated sizing.
To be fair, I’ve compared the Zara US sizing chart and an Addition Elle/MXM sizing chart (one that I’m comfortable in promoting for near accurate sizing imho,) primarily for L and XL sizes. When a label is sized numerically, you’ll see that the 12′s and 14′s are comparable in sizes for both companies, so all is good (assuming Zara actually sticks to those sizes when making the clothes).
But when the labels are sized L/XL, you’ll notice quite a discrepancy in size difference. A woman’s Size 8 is comparable to a size L according to the Zara chart.
Uh… no.
This actually brings me back to my university days, which was a long time ago. I was hoping that things would change with over a decade of room to do so, but this morning I was sadly demystified on that notion.
You see, way back then, I went shopping with a friend whom even at that time was much smaller than me. I would guess that in regular size clothing, she was a Large. But the clothes that she had tried on wouldn’t fit unless she picked up the 2XL (that’s two sizes in difference.) I could plainly see a whole range of emotions on her face as she went through denial: “I can’t have gained that much,” sadness: “OMG, I’ve gained weight,” and anxiety: ”OMG, I’m FAT!!”
Back then I was bouncing between 1X and 2X, and I knew how she felt. It was a hard lesson for me to accept myself, except, there wasn’t a reason for her to feel that way.
She was healthy and all around perfect, not an inch of unnecessary fat to her bones, but a clothing label was trying to tell her different. And in a funk, she didn’t buy anything that day, even though the 2XL looked great on her.
I boycotted that store as much as I could ever since, especially their clothing department (and despite being a large chain, they recently closed all of their doors earlier this year.)
This isn’t a game.
Companies like Zara need to stop messing with people’s heads, especially since they cater to an entire family line, including children.
We as a society need to stop worrying about a stupid number that only the wearer is going to see.
We are all beautiful.
And unregulated size labels can go off themselves.
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