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The fashion industry depends on helping people look better, to avoid ugliness and to highlight sophistication and beauty.
But the fashion industry, and the beauty industry on the other hand, are accused of sexism, toxicity, and impact on women’s mental health, through the ideal standards that the two industries promote, which in turn makes millions of women around the world feel inferior because they do not have the beauty that these industries preach.
However, the value of the global fashion industry is $1.46 trillion, while the value of the global beauty industry is $511 billion.
Measurement chart
Labels like “Medium M” or “Large L” do not seem to be accurate to many people around the world, as they vary from country to country, and perhaps from one brand or manufacturer to another.
The fashion industry does not have one universal standard chart, so while you may be a size 14 in one store, it may be a 20 in another.
According to the Washington Post, the clothing classification assumes that many of us do not mind dropping a size or two when buying new clothes.
Although people, in general, have become larger over the past 50 years, the size numbers have become smaller. In 2015, newspaper data found that a dress size of 12 in 1958 is now a size 6. Note that the weight of an American woman The average person increased from 140 pounds (63.5 kilograms) in 1960 to 168.5 pounds (76 kilograms) in 2014.
Clothing sizes also vary internationally, which presents an additional complication given the number of clothes shipped around the world. Clothing sizes in the United States and Europe are usually at least one order of magnitude larger than those in Asia.
Ready-made clothing revolution
Women were not confused about sizes before the Industrial Revolution, as fashion was limited to the ladies of palaces and wealthy circles only. However, a single piece was tailored to suit the size of its owner, while women in the poorer classes made their own clothes, so women did not suffer from the burden of sizes. Small or inappropriate.
But over time, those cultural norms began to shift Great Depression, when hardly anyone could buy food, let alone cloth. At the same time, industrial techniques were improving, making mass production of clothing cheaper for companies. By the end of World War II, these factors, along with the emergence of advertising, had sparked a consumer revolution and led to the standardization of clothing designs and sizes.
In the early 1940s, a study was conducted on women’s body measurements in the hope of creating a uniform standard system for clothing. The study took 59 different measurements for 15,000 women, but the exciting discovery made by researchers Ruth O’Brien and William Shelton was that women did not want to share their measurements with shopping staff.
The researchers concluded that for the system to work, the government would have to create an “arbitrary” measure, such as shoe size, rather than various “human measurements.” In 1958, the National Institute of Standards and Technology established a set of even numbers from 8 to 38 to represent overall size and a set of letters (T, R, S) and symbols (+, -) to represent length and girth, respectively. This is based on the research of O’Brien and Shelton. Brands were advised to make their clothes accordingly. But by 1983, this standard had fallen, because no There are standard body sizes in the United States.
International sizing works in a country like China, for example, because “plus size is very unusual,” says Lynn Boradi, a professor at Buffalo State University who specializes in sizing. But America is home to women of all shapes and sizes. Imposing one set of standards may make it easier for some people to shop, such as the “skinny white women” that O’Brien and Shelton relied on for all their measurements, but it excludes a larger number of people, perhaps representing the majority of women. Even the majority of marketing research indicates that women in the United States wear a size 14 or larger, which is at the same time the rarest size in retail stores despite its increasing demand.
Plus-size women are spending more than ever. Sales of plus-size clothing in 2016 amounted to $20.4 billion, an increase of 17% compared to the same period in 2013, according to market research company NPD Group.
Fitting room burden
Some have described “crazy sizes” as the cause of women’s frustration over current-day clothing, and even more frustrating for online shoppers. Although $240 billion worth of clothing is purchased online every year, returns are estimated at about 40%, mostly due to… To sizing problems, which represents an annoying nightmare for shoppers and business owners as well, according to Time magazine.
Although the problem of inaccurate sizes is clear in modern clothing, women are the most victims of sizes that are too small, because they have multiple clothing options to suit various occasions such as work, home, club, evening wear, parties, modest clothing, sports and swimming. Here the burden of the fitting room appears, as women do not They suffer only in the journey of searching for a distinctive design, but the greatest struggle is in obtaining a beautiful piece of clothing in the appropriate size.
