Having read: http://www.rodcollins.com/wordpress/what-dress-size-or-waist-size-am-i-really and with my dander up so to speak I feel it is incumbent on me to impart some observations on this subject from the perspective of someone that has been in the fashion industry for over 25 years. There is no claim of expertise wrapped up in that fact, just a statement suggesting that after that length of time I should have gained some knowledge of how the rag trade ticks. The motivation for writing this piece comes from a growing frustration of how the industry is portrayed by both traditional (professional) and new media (amateur) platforms. Ignorance is the common denominator found in so called controversial topics surrounding fashion so when I read or hear a piece on child labour or land fill or as in this case garment sizing I uniformly come to the conclusion that the author or broadcaster doesn’t have a Scooby Do. The fashion trade with its disparate and secretive nature doesn’t have a strong voice in countering accusations, but when unsubstantiated claims are made that my chosen profession is “kidding people and “risking the nation’s health” its time to attempt to redress the balance.
The offending article was brought to my attention when I saw a tweet from @TheRealCelUK and a conversation followed where she made the case along the same lines as the blog post that vanity sizing clouds the emotional buying decisions of the consumer and therefore increases health risks. Whilst our conversation didn’t reach any conclusions, the Rod Collins blog post lays the blame firmly at the door of “manufacturers” for this marketing conspiracy.
First of all Rod me old mate, manufacturers (i.e. the factories) have nothing whatsoever to do with sizing decisions. The vast majority of garment suppliers are independently run companies that have customers who are the retail store group and brands and it is they that decide the specifications of a garment not the factory and if you don’t even have a basic grasp of the structure of the industry you are attacking how can you expect to be taken seriously?
How a set of measurement instructions arrive at a factory is an important question as the explanation might provide an alternative more plausible truth. The one place a size label is redundant is in a bespoke garment where an individual item has been made to measure for a client after several fittings. Companies in the mass market using industrial production techniques can only offer an inferior version of this fit process as within an arbitrary size there will be a an array of body shapes and a margin of size tolerance to be considered, therefore a size label is by definition a unit of compromise. Unlike the enlightened people frequenting Saville Row and the like where client participation is crucial to a successful outcome, multiple retailers carry out their technical operations behind closed doors. Much time and effort goes into profiling to arrive at a typical customer in demographic, fashion preference and body type terms. To represent an archetypal customer they select a specialist fit model. These people are selected not for their looks but for their size and shape and they are used on a long term basis to try and establish a continuity within a garment’s fit process as well as to hopefully match up to the body image of their target customers. Within each company there are departments that have responsibility for a specific product area and this department will have its own dedicated team of designers, buyers, technicians and merchandisers. The merchandiser will decide on the size range and ratios based mainly on historical sales data. (An interesting aside here as it should be pointed out that if more people were honest about their size and purchased accordingly the data received by merchandisers would alter buying patterns and lead to greater numbers of larger sizes being stocked as well as the size range being extended upwards).The garment tech is ultimately responsible for the fit of each style and it will be this person who signs off on the measurements and specifications. This inevitably leads to variations in size and fit for a fashion labels products, but also across the high street offer as a whole and that is without factoring in the effects of the style, cut and materials used. These are the issues that the garment tech has to contend with when deciding on the fit of a garment and they have a far greater bearing on the ultimate comfort of a product than a number on a label. A lot will also depend on what sort of garment we are talking about, a bra with its more elaborate sizing codes will have many more man hours invested in establishing its fit compared to the humble T shirt for example. If it is accepted that fit is the more relevant issue than sizing then what has happened to open up the trade to misguided criticism?
The answer can partly be found in the shape of one extremely successful company called Zara. Now a global phenomenon, Zara has its origins in Spain and the supply chain business model it created completely revolutionised the industry (a separate post would be needed to explain this in detail). Suffice to say that the speed in which this system enabled Zara to get catwalk trends into their stores meant that the rest of the high street had to react and as a consequence one of the things that has suffered is the time taken to establish the correct fit for a new product, so whereas a quality brand that has set collection launch dates will devote a considerable amount of time and effort on making sure the fit is correct, the young fashion sector simply do not have that luxury, so fit is one of the processes to suffer under increasing time pressure thus creating a hit and miss affair for the consumer craving their cheap fashion fix. These market forces did not exist until relatively recently so to try and compare second hand (sorry vintage) garments with today’s cheap high street product as Rod Collins suggests is an unfair comparison. Perhaps a study of an archive garment from a heritage brand along side its contemporary relative from the same brand would be a better indication of guilt or innocence.
So reality doesn’t indicate a coordinated fashion conspiracy but instead suggests that it is a combination of the mechanics of the industry and supply and demand economics that are contributory factors to an imperfect state of affairs along with the more obvious point that people love fashion and they sometimes make bad decisions. If we all dressed in regulation Maoist tunics everything could be standardised and this issue would disappear but we don’t so we are left to exercise our own personal judgement on what we decide to wear and how many happy meals we consume and long may that continue.
The wider and potentially more serious implication and the reason for writing this extended piece is that with the rise and rise of the blog every participant self appoints themselves as an expert on every subject under the sun. The aim seemingly to provide froth rather than substance which becomes a catalyst for pointless investigations leading to unnecessary scares. This is becoming increasingly prevalent as a result we become less well informed not better and increasingly paranoid about things that don’t really matter. I do not claim that the fashion industry is without fault and there are important subjects that probably need to be given an airing but this really isn’t one of them.
