The History of Standardized Sizes in Womens Fashion and Why They FAILED

Hello everyone and welcome back! Today's video is going to be tackling the history of standardized sizes when it comes to women's clothing and women's shoes. The big question is where did these come from? How did we decide to even do standardized sizing, let alone how did we decide what those sizes should be? And why don't they work? Because we all know that they really don't work terribly well. So what happened? Did they ever even work in the first place? Spoiler alert, they were never really intended to. I know, it's a bit shocking, but that is the true reality of it. This is a very complex subject that when you usually look it up gets sort of dismissed pretty quickly. In reality, standard sizing came out of the fact that how we were interacting with our clothing, how we were purchasing it and wearing it and making it, all changed dramatically during that time period. And this was just one of the many ways that the industry was trying to keep up, so that way they could help out both the customer and the actual manufacturers as well. So before we dive deep into this topic, I first want to say a really big thank you to my sponsor for this week, Acorn TV. Acorn TV is the largest commercial-free British streaming service that has an amazing selection of series from various genres, even original shows you can't find anywhere else. I've been subscribed to Acorn TV for years to watch historical dramas and mysteries. It's commercial-free and starts at only $5.99 a month and has a massive selection of shows that I love, such as Wartime Farm, Land Girls, Foils War, and Dead Still. After growing up on Perot and Agatha Christie, I adore a good historical murder mystery and can easily find all sorts of shows to fit this niche. 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Well, it's just simply because people are lots of different proportions. Bodies are not typical. They're not average. Even if you have the same exact measurements, you may look completely different than someone else. It's just complicated. And in reality, standardized sizing never assumed that it could fit everyone. That was never the fault of the system. The people that came up with it in the beginning realized that there should be a lot of variation on that system, that not everybody should follow it, and that there should be alterations constantly throughout to keep the up-to-date and accommodating lots of different body shapes. But the system was needed so that way new manufacturers could start with a basic set of knowledge. They would understand what the typical range is and what the typical measurements supposedly were and how to adjust from there to fit their audience and their audience's needs in terms of proportions and sizes. So this was not only there to help people have an easier time purchasing their clothing, but also to help manufacturers have an easier time with producing it. Because the designer is not necessarily the person that does the patterning or the grading into multiple sizes, because they have to start with one specific size and then grade up and down to the other sizes. And that's also not the person that's manufacturing it, and that's also not the people that are selling it. So there's lots of different people in this process and everything changes a little bit as we go along, but they need to have a really consistent communication. And having a standard set of measurements chosen by the company, which is based off of the supposed standardized measurements that all companies are supposed to use as a start, means it's going to start off more consistently. This was not an issue historically until the late 19th century. Prior to that point, women's dresses and fitted garments were custom made for them, unless they were of course buying them secondhand, which case you picked something up at the secondhand store and were able to make sure that it fit. They weren't buying sized clothing because there wasn't ready-made clothing like that. And that starts to shift at the end of the 19th century, when we start seeing mail order catalogs really take off, especially in the United States, where more and more people are living in areas where there are not stores nearby, and they still need to get clothing. But they don't have the time or the skills to make it themselves, and they don't have the ability to go into town on a regular basis in order to buy that stuff. So mail order catalogs became a necessity and were very popular, and they had to somehow sell people clothing that hopefully fit them. On top of this, we start getting department stores. And while they start off with us still walking up to a counter and having a salesperson help us with what we want, bring the things to us, give us advice and knowledge, they eventually become a case where you as a customer walk in, grab something off the rack or off the shelf yourself. So no longer do you have someone assisting you, taking your measurements, telling you what will or will not work for your body proportions and shape. We've suddenly lost that. So the tag on the clothing has to make up for an entire person's knowledge, which is a lot to ask for a single tag. But these changes in the way clothing and shoes were being sold meant that we had to come up with new systems. And in reality, shoes came up with a system first. While shoes were available custom fit well through the 19th century and even into the 20th century, it became less and less common. Sizes were also available dating well back into the 18th century. Now the issue here is that it was not consistent. So a size 4 in one brand might be a 6 in another and an 8 in another. There was no consistency to this. Individual shoemakers came up with the system that they liked and wanted to use. So it didn't really help when a store might be selling multiple brands, it definitely didn't help when customers were going to multiple stores, and it definitely was a problem when we started mass manufacturing in large areas that weren't necessarily where the shoes were going to be sold. So in 1889, there was a meeting of many men who sat down and decided what the standard measurements were going to be for shoe sizes. They said here is the typical size range, here is the measurements that correspond to that. The main thing that they were focusing on though was length because at that time they still offered a lot of different widths. So width was less of a concern because there were usually more options than just one width. The size chart that they came up with though ran from 1 to 12 for children's shoes and 1 to 12 for adult shoes. They gave a very consistent difference between each size so that way the size chart could expand upwards as it needed to in custom or eventually regular sizes because they did expect that people's feet would change over time as they had seen some of that previously. Women's adult sizes were typically thought of to be in the lower end of that 1 to 12 range. Most commonly, they said that sizes 2 to size 8 were typical for what women were purchasing. Now if you are an American and you're kind of having a little bit of a panic about how tiny that was, take a breath, you're fine. It's not what it sounds like. Yes, feet were probably a little bit shorter back then. They were definitely narrower from what I can find but that's dependent on our activity levels and the types of shoes and all sorts of other things that we'll get into in a little bit. But that chart for how the shoes were fit actually compares closer to a modern size 4 to 10 when it comes to US sizes. You guys in the UK might realize this is actually pretty similar to your current size chart in terms of the actual measurements. So interestingly enough, the American women's sizes seem to be the only ones that shifted because currently US women's and US men's run on different number ranges and they're about a size and a half off in modern day. So historically that shifted at some point for women's shoes from what I can tell around the 1920s. This was because you actually had a different measurement for your feet than for your shoes because we had a standard length for the shoe. That standard length occurred no matter what the toe shape was. If you've ever had pointed shoes, you know that they need to be longer and different heel heights and different toe shapes and different types of shoes. Whether you're wearing it with heavy socks or light socks, that always needs to fit differently. You need to have a different amount of toe space and a different amount of foot space. And rather than making sure that there's a whole variety that would always fit a size 7 foot, they just gave you your foot size, size 5, and then the shoe size you should buy according to what style it was. A size 6, a size 7, a size 8. They had half sizes too. And as you went up in sizes, you could also go up in width if you needed to. They had a standard 5 widths that were available in most stores and a wider range than that in some others. So there was a much larger variety available to a customer than we see today because today you might have to actually go up half a size to accommodate a wider foot. They did not. On top of that, as you add every single width, you add 1 24th of an inch, which is a very tiny, tiny amount, but will actually overall increase the length of the shoe gradually. It's not nearly as much as a full size difference. A full size difference between, say, a 5 and a 6 is one barleycorn. If you don't know what that is, that's fine. I wouldn't expect you to. It is one third of an inch, which for those in metric is a little under a centimeter. And it's a very arbitrary measurement, but that's how we measure out the difference between whole sizes and shoes. Half sizes are just half of that. So the adjustments for length when you upped the width were very minor, but eventually added up. But this meant that you had a really great range of options available to you. However, if you realize that this might start to get really confusing as a consumer when you don't know what size of shoe you should be getting, that was also kind of the point. You would go into a shoe store and they would sit you down, take your measurements, go to the back, find the shoes that they thought would be appropriate to fit you depending on the style that you chose, and would help you that way. So you were relying on someone else's knowledge and understanding, which especially was true because they didn't actually put normal sizes in these shoes. They didn't want you to know what your size actually was. They found that if this was the case, people got too hung up on what size they should be, rather than with what size fit them in that style and fit of shoe. So they just wanted to get rid of that problem altogether and actually put a weird little code on the inside of the shoe. So if you look at antique shoes from around the 1890s through 1920s, you might find a few digits stamped on the inside, which kind of make no sense unless you know what you're looking for. There are usually three numbers that are important. Anything else they just put there in order to confuse you on purpose. The three numbers you're looking for are the actual size of the shoe, a zero or a five that tells you the half size, so this is a good way to orient where they are, and then the other number will give you the width. Now the width number is not always consistent. It sometimes is a is one, it sometimes is double a is one, or b is one, so it varies a little bit, but there should be that other number that tells you the overall width of the shoe there as well. And again, this was done on purpose so that way the customers didn't know what size they were, and most of the time they did. They understood what that meant to some extent, but they didn't want people to be buying the wrong size just because the number was more ideal. Even mail order catalogs would request when you were ordering a pair of shoes that you not only gave your shoe size, but the length and the width of your foot as well, so that way they could determine what size was going to be best for you. So at no point was anyone expected to get the same shoe size for every style of shoe. This starts to change though in the early 20th century. As of the 1890s, we start to see more and more articles talking about the growing shoe sizes of women in America. This is something that they attribute to women being more athletic, putting on athletic style shoes which allow for more expansion, and stretching out their feet. This is something that is repeated over and over well into the 1920s, saying that women are now wearing size six, seven, or eight more commonly than back when they wore a size three or four on average. So there is a massive shift in the actual typical size being worn, which isn't just because feet are getting a little bit bigger, it's also because the expectations of how shoes will fit has also been changing. This is in part due to that added athletic nature of women's lives, but is also in part due to the fact that the styles for shoes were getting longer and longer pointed toes. They wanted a narrow foot more than a short foot, which meant that in order to get that appearance, women were sizing up and going a little bit more narrow in order to still fit their foot. So women were buying shoes that were larger than the size than they would typically need or purchase for regular styles of shoes. So there seems to be less and less concern over having a larger shoe size. In fact, lots of articles all over the U.S. were constantly arguing over which city had the women with the biggest feet. L.A., Chicago, Pittsburgh, all these places were competing to say we have the biggest feet. I guess in some ways it implied that their women were more sturdy and athletic and that was a positive thing. It gets a little muddled and I'm not sure that the idea that smaller feet for women is better really goes away suddenly at that point, but it definitely changes how we're looking at things like shoe sizes. Because of all of these changes in the style and how women were buying their shoes and the expectations of the shoes and the fact that they themselves were now going and pulling shoes off the shelves without the aid of a salesperson, we sort of came up with a new standard system. Not in any official sense, it just seemed to occur very naturally and no one really talks about it much, that I can find at least. And all it basically does is mean that when you go to buy a size 7 shoe, all of the size 7 shoes fit, theoretically. It's not always a perfect system, but it means that I'm not having to buy a size 6, 7, or 8 depending on my toe shape. It means that it's going to be easier for me to purchase things, even though it does make it a little bit more complicated for the manufacturers, because now they have to figure out how much longer that toe should be, how much larger or smaller that shoe should be depending on its style. It gets a little complex, but it means it's a little bit easier for us to purchase, even though things like athletic shoes, hiking boots, and flats versus high heels, and all of the variety of different things that you can purchase might end up being different sizes for you today. Still, it's a easier system to follow as a consumer. Of course, a lot of this system falls apart when we take away all of those widths. If we still offered five different widths in almost all of our shoes, this would be a much better system, and we wouldn't be nearly as concerned about it fitting more people. But right now, we don't have that option. You're lucky if you find more than one width, so that's the problem that we have with the current shoe sizing system. It could be helped a little bit if more measurements were able to be provided in terms of the internal length, or preferably the internal circumference of the shoes in different locations along the foot, maybe the proportions of the shoe where the ball of the foot falls versus the back of the heel, and how much it's just extension of toes. That could be helped a little bit, but I think we'd have to get to know our feet a lot better in order for that to actually help. That information wouldn't mean much to people at the current moment. Hopefully, though, we can possibly get more information like that in the future, or just better yet, get more widths available. I do have to specify that is not an easy thing to do for a lot of companies. Creating another shoe width is creating a whole nother shoe, and when small companies are dealing with the fact that manufacturers are requiring sometimes thousands of pairs in every style for every width, they're barely able to sell that in the standard width, let alone if they had to purchase it all over again in a wider width. It's not practical. Granted, today the advancements that we're making within the way that machines are being worked out and the shipping systems and all sorts of other things mean that those minimums are reducing, but it's still pretty high and it's still pretty difficult. For the bigger companies, though, they really don't have the same reasons. They can manage to produce that large quantity and to sell it. There just is a belief within the shoe industry that it's not a lucrative way to go. Hopefully that will change, and as a customer you could definitely push for that and insist on that and write letters and buy the things that fit you better. I'm not sure how much that will easily change, but if we at least provided some measurements, it might help people understand their feet a little bit better and understand the shoes a little bit better. Now, all of this does not apply to the way that women's garments are sized. They developed in an entirely different system and they are dysfunctional in an entirely different way, and a much larger way in reality. Originally, when women's garments started to be sold as ready-made sized garments rather than as custom fit garments, they were being sold in mail order catalogs and were being sold by their bust measurement. So the bust measurement was the definition of their size, unless it was say a skirt and then it could be the waist. Other garments sometimes used the hip as well, and while there was not an assumption that the proportions would be precisely correct for every person, a lot of these garments didn't matter in the same way. They had loose waist and sometimes very full skirts. Even if they had a waistband, usually the skirt and or the bodice was gathered down to the waistband or darted to fit the waistband, so adjustments could be pretty easily made in order to change certain proportions. So there wasn't as much of a concern about making sure that you had a wide variety of proportions for your garment, because the garment itself was pretty adjustable. They also had some variation in the types of garments and the proportions and the sizes that were available. You had the women's range, which was more mature styles of clothing, and it was aimed at a more mature population in terms of its size range and its proportions. You also had the missus range, which was for younger women. Today it's closer to our junior range, and that had different proportions, different styles, and different size range than the women's did. This meant that it could accommodate different people, but it also meant that there was a problem developing. In the 1920s, more and more women were deciding that regardless of their age or body shape, they wanted to wear the fashionable youthful styles that were everywhere at the time. So they were having an issue of having only fit in women's sizes, but wanting the styles of the missus range. This of course became a problem, and they started considering expanding the ranges and putting more styles in both ranges for sizes, and they also started considering another option of what we call half sizes. A half size isn't just slightly larger than a full size. It actually changes the proportions of that full size, meaning that it's usually meant for shorter women, and very often they would assume a larger hip and a larger arm where it would matter. So the proportions completely changed, and they would offer this in both missus and women's, meaning that it fit a wider range of bodies regardless of the style available. And this was something that was immensely popular throughout the 1930s, 40s, into the 50s, and was around even longer than that. So they recognized, even before we came up with standardized sizes, that the general regular sizes that were available didn't encompass everybody. And this was becoming more and more of an issue as we reached the 1930s, and the style of clothing that we are wearing changes dramatically. It is now much more fitted at both the bust and the hip, and while there is some adjustment in the waist area, it's not nearly as dramatic as it might have been 10 or 20 or 30 years earlier. So things need to be fitted more closely and more precisely, and while alterations could certainly be done, ideally the clothing would at least fit the person to begin with, and then could be altered slightly. On top of this, using just simply a bust size was not informative enough. It just simply meant that it was ideal for that particular bust measurement, supposedly. And women had started already using it as a general size rather than going off of their actual bust measurement, because the measurement of the garment might be larger in order to have the right style, or it might be very closely fitted, so it's going to vary widely. And on top of that, vanity sizing was already a thing, meaning that instead of me going and purchasing a size 38 based off of the exact measure of my chest, I might find some stores that sell things that fit me at a size 34. That was a problem because some people were more interested in getting a smaller size number, even though it's not visible, feeling better about themselves, because they were being told a smaller size is more ideal. We already had an issue of people rating their own body value off of a random number that was being assigned to these clothes, and that they recognized was a big issue very early on. Granted, they didn't seem to recognize why this was an issue in terms of our self-worth and mental state, but they did recognize that it was a problem for manufacturers who were trying to sell clothing, and if other companies were selling clothing that made people happier because they got to wear smaller sizes, people were losing out on sales. And they solved a problem in that way. It's missing a lot, but it's a start. Better than not recognizing that it's a problem at all, I guess. So as of 1937, they started talking about coming up with a standard size system. This required a start of figuring out what sizes and measurements that should be, which meant that they had to measure a lot of people. And even then, they recognized that this wasn't going to actually answer all of the questions. It wasn't going to encompass enough people. It wasn't going to create a system where suddenly everyone fit. There were going to be lots of body shapes and sizes that fell outside of the standard range that they were going to come up with, and it wasn't meant to be the end-all be-all. It was just meant to be more information and more help to manufacturers to keep consistency going in a way that meant they could be competitive with each other, and that hopefully people could find what they needed more easily. What the emphasis was put on was not use these exact measurements, but take these measurements as a place to start. Adjust them to fit your customer base, where you're selling to, what sort of people you're selling to. Adjust your styles and your proportions accordingly, so that way as many people as possible can be accommodated by lots of different stores. They didn't want one universal system for every single seller. In fact, they very explicitly said that was not the point. So in order to make this happen, in 1939, the Department of Agriculture, through the Bureau of Home Economics, went out and started measuring a lot of people. For adult women, they went to seven different states, and they measured 10,000 women, which you might be able to tell at this point is a tiny, tiny quantity that really is not going to give us a good basis for what sort of woman existed in the United States in 1939. And as you might have guessed, it excluded a lot of people. It was inevitably going to be mostly white women of a certain class in certain living conditions and certain backgrounds. That meant that it was not going to encompass an actual average. It was not going to look at bodies that weren't part of a very, very tiny group of a certain age, race, and class. It's a problem. We can recognize that now. But it was the first time something like this was really done on that scale. So while it is incredibly imperfect and a really big problem in the way that they went about it, it started something. And eventually, future studies encompassed more and more people. And the concept is there, even if the actual practice of it was incredibly flawed and problematic. This system ended up being pretty widely adopted across the United States, but it was only in reference to dresses. It wasn't used as the base system for separates or for accessories or other garments, such as swimsuits. So it left a lot of confusion because everything had a different scale and system that it was working off of. The sizes were still used as a standard concept of where to begin, but this is how things like small, medium, and large got created, or entirely different numbering systems for different garments. It just wasn't consistent to start with. This was recognized as a problem by the time we reached the 1950s, and in 1953, the Department of Commerce actually came up with a new standardized system that was meant to apply to all of the different garments. Again, this wasn't picked up by everybody, and it wasn't used universally as it wasn't really intended to be, but they did encourage its use across multiple types of garments rather than just dresses. They also recommended that within all of these numbers that were being used, there should still be variation. They said that there should be short, average, and tall, and slender, average, and full hip for all garments that might be influenced by those proportion changes. So they were saying that even with the standard size, there needed to be variation, and it would be helpful if that too was standardized to some extent, meaning that you would look for a certain word and you would understand what that meant, and they were common to find. Not surprisingly, that did not take off as well as they had hoped, and companies just didn't really pick up on that in no small part due to the fact that the sheer quantity of garments that they would need to carry for that size range would be pretty absurd. It would require them to have hundreds of versions of one dress, and sales don't always support that sort of a variety. So it just didn't really work out like that. Some companies did aim towards someone who was tall or short or slender or fuller-hipped or just average, but one company doing all of that just wasn't terribly common. Other places around the same time were coming up with standardized systems. There was a 1954 system that was put into place in Britain, which was based off of hip measurements as the standardized size. The rest of the proportions could be just about anything, but at least you knew where you stood on your hip measurement. Again, leaves a lot to be desired, but many places were trying different concepts of how they wanted to put numbers on their garments and what that meant for the production of them. Regardless, it was understood that these systems were not going to work for everybody, and in fact were going to work for very few people, and that the brands themselves would be responsible for making sure that there was enough variety, meaning that they would have enough of a customer base to survive, or that they would specialize in certain ways and pick up customer bases that weren't there. They really relied on businesses themselves to make sure that a variety of clothing shapes and sizes were being produced in many different styles. Unfortunately though, things like vanity sizing continue to occur throughout the 20th meaning that brands were constantly competing with others over who could have the happiest customers because of that value assigned to being a smaller size. So the size that a body would be has changed over the 20th and into the 21st century. This is not only dependent on the vanity sizing, but also on what body shape or proportions are ideal. The body proportions that we were looking for in the early 2000s are not the same ones that we are looking for today, and brands have gradually adapted for that. It's still not perfect, it's still not really where it should be for the average woman, but it is getting better. On top of this, you might have noticed not only is there a disparity between a size six in one brand and a size six in another brand, but you might go into a store and find that they have completely different fits for all of their size sixes, or even the same pair of pants might not fit in different fabrics or in slightly different styles. This is unfortunately where it gets kind of complicated because the process of manufacturing goes through so many different people. The designer, the patterner, the person that grades things up and down so that way it fits more sizes, the manufacturer, the actual store selling the product. There's a whole bunch of people involved in this. There's a lot of changes that can be made to the clothing as it goes through. One of the factors is that the fabrics might be different. If something has a three percent stretch versus a two percent stretch, that makes a big difference in how something's going to fit. A certain pair of pants that has looser thighs is going to fit differently than something that has tighter thighs and how they form out the hips for that high waist versus low waist. All of these things create a massive variety that makes it very difficult to fit things consistently. And on top of that, they're not always coming from the same designer or the same patterner. They're not always coming from the same manufacturer. The manufacturers might change slight things in the actual process, such as the seam allowance differences between each pair of pants can vary because there are humans involved. The cutting out of these things is not terribly consistent. The entire stack that has been cut out at the same time might be different from top to bottom. Things might get changed in terms of what fabric is available. There's just so many minor alterations that occur to every single garment as it goes through the process, and they aren't all measured to make sure that they come out correct. That's just not part of the process when you're dealing with thousands and thousands of garments. So there's going to be variety, and it's unfortunate, but that's just the way that our modern system functions, because the amount of time that has to go into changing that, to double checking those measurements, to even knowing those measurements, is beyond what most companies are willing, or in some cases, able to do. So this is my proposal to help change this, because ideally not only would we have a size that's less important, but underneath, of course, you need the measurements of what ideal body proportions this is meant to fit, what range it can fit, essentially. And from there, it would be ideal if we could have the measurements of the actual garment, and not just bust, waist, hip, but also things like what's the thigh measurement, what's the inseam measurement, the neck, or the upper arms. All of those things get put in as well, which means that, yes, there are a lot of measurements, and you wouldn't necessarily need to take them into consideration for every single garment, but they're there in case it's a problem for you. My upper arm's rather large. I sometimes have trouble finding stretchy t-shirts that aren't uncomfortable for this reason, and I really, really wish that they would put in the actual measure of the garment, and then would also put in the stretch potential, two percent, three percent, whatever it is. I can do the math myself, that's fine, but I would like to see the measurements of the actual garment. This is not something we're going to be able to change overnight. This is not something I'm just going to be able to go yell at a whole bunch of really large companies to do, because it's going to take time, therefore money, for them to bother doing this. They probably won't want to. However, if you are a smaller business that has the ability to do this, even on a small scale of just the size six is these measurements, and it scales up and down from there, just a start, that would be really, really helpful. And then what I want you to do is start talking about it as loudly as possible. I want everyone to know why they should shop there for that reason alone, where you know that you'll be able to put on that pair of pants and get it up over your thighs, where you know you'll be able to put on that shirt and actually button the collar closed. I want to be able to see those measurements, and I want to hear about it as loudly as possible, and I want everyone to go support those companies. And if companies are not able to do that, large or small, a lot of places have room for you to put in comments and reviews. In your reviews, go measure your garment. Go talk about what those measurements come out to be, how much it seems to stretch, how much it stretches up or down, not just a, I am a size 12 and this garment doesn't fit like a size 12, it's too big or it's too small. Okay, how is it too big or too small? Is it too small in the arms? Is it too small in the shoulders? Is it too big in the bust? Get into the details, talk about where it's a problem, talk about what the measurements are, go measure it. And hopefully this will help someone in picking out what garment they should choose, because they can go measure their own t-shirts, their own garments, and compare that. And this, theoretically, if we start providing that information on a regular basis, if we start forcing companies to do that, and encouraging them to do that, then we can also reduce the amount of waste that we go through, where we order things that we can't try on, and we get them and they don't fit. And we either keep them and try to fit into them, but don't end up doing that and getting rid of the clothing, or we have to send them back. And we all know that's not the ideal circumstance for a lot of reasons. So if the measurements were provided, maybe it would fix that, maybe it would help at least a little bit. That is my proposal to both customers and manufacturers, to start providing as much information as you can, and make that an achievement. Make that something of a goal, because that alone could really dramatically change the way that we shop, and the way that we view clothing, and its relationship with the body. Because we don't necessarily have stigmas on all of those measurements. We have stigmas when it comes to what size we are for this arbitrary random number that we assigned all the way back in 1939, and has dramatically changed over that time period. It's not a good system, it's not an effective system, and it was never meant to be. And that's the important thing to remember. We were never meant to think of ourselves as a single number size.