I was doing my weekly read-through of the Dallas Business Journal and this article caught my eye for some reason. It’s a study of how designer labels actually have larger waist sizes than comparable products with more mainstream labels. This phenomenon is being called “vanity sizing“.
The apparel study looked at more than 1,000 types and brands of women’s pants. They varied in actual size by up to 13 inches, in some cases. In other words, one size pant “6” might be 13 inches larger in the waist than another size “6” pant.
“And it seems that the more recognized the brand, the bigger difference,” she said. “So national brands like Ralph Lauren and Jones New York tended to run larger than private labels such as Route 66 and Honors.”
The pants with the biggest waists and smallest size numbers were typically the more expensive clothing brands, Kinley said. In her study she found that pants costing $100 or more were more likely to have vanity sizing, while pants under $50 were sized more consistently.
Kinley said designers practice vanity sizing because it creates customer loyalty, makes their patrons feel better and impacts their sales to retailers.
You ladies crack me up.
No wonder is so fing hard to by stuff for women. I think Tiffiany’s should vanity sizes diamonds so I could get a 1 c. price for 3c. diamond 🙂
I’m all about vanity sizes for clothes, but not for diamonds! 😉
Don’t joke too much, I know a lot of guys who would fall for this kind of pricing for their… umm… shall we say… “socks”.
I hate vanity size clothing! It sucks, because you have to try on 15 different size pants to find the one that actually fits. I have a pair of Tommy jeans that are a size 10 and a pair of RL jeans that are a size 6. Every other pant I buy is an 8.
Oh yeah, it’s really freakin’ funny. Do you know just how terribly annoying it is to try to find clothes that fit? One store, I wear one size. Another store, another size. Yeah, you just think we shop for hours because we love shopping. It’s really because it takes us that long to figure out what size actually fits!
I know by heart which shops make me slimmer!!
I always knew they skewed the sizing to make you feel thinner. I’ve been saying that for years. There was no way I was ever under a size 2, even at my lightest. Hell, I don’t even think I was ever a size 2.