Patterns are tricky ... go by the actual finished garment measurements ... sometimes these are on the back of the envelope ... other times open it up and look for the bust measurement printed right on the pattern... that shows you what the actual measurement of the finished product would be ...

Yep, I'm a size sixteen too according to the pattern envelope ... but if I made it over a sixteen ... it would be huge....

The multi-size patterns are good ... you can make it to fit...

best of luck ... I wish I had more time to sew ...

You know there's a size 0, size 00 and a size -1.

It's all nuts. I'm guessing that my 2008 size 16/18 would have been a 24/26 or 28/30 in 1978.

Well, yes. But it's actually due to the antimatter between their ears....

(/snark)

And it goes the other way. I saw the cutest of all jackets in now-defunct Caban. Knew they wouldn't have my size, but checked anyway ("regular" clothing stores won't carry a 20 lest the "normal" customers be forced to see fat people - this from Women's Wear Daily as well as a store merchandiser). Well! They have an XL. I hold it up. I put it on my (then) skinny seven year old son. The adult women's XL fits a seven year old boy perfectly. How twisted is that?

I've noticed a pattern in pants size tags in our house:

My Pants: Straightforward numbers indicating waist and leg length.

starmalachite's Pants: A mysterious alphanumerical string that looks like a football code (of either the "quarterback calling a play" or the "President authorizing a nuclear launch" variety of "football").

I've been told all my life that you can't believe the tag, that's why you have to 'try things on' (which I hate doing.)

Back in the days when Marilyn Monroe was alive, it was said she wore a size 12. I forget where I read it, but someone took the measurements of her 'size 12' and it turned out to be more like a size 16.

I think you totally pegged it there with the price tags in the comic....

OTOH, you could say the same thing about handmade by yourself vs. store-bought. A lot of things you can make with twenty bucks worth of stuff and some sweat equity, but once you sew that tag in, the price triples, and *might* come back down on clearance but you still gotta pay for the advertising...

Yes, people-time is expensive, but not like that. And, hey, you've got a serger, so you can even make your own blue jeans (which you can't make without one)... talk about paying for the brand there....

How strange. I could swear that over here, sizes go in the opposite direction, i.e. the clothes are smaller than what they are actually supposed to be for that size number. Of course, it varies by manufacturer.
One example ... in 2001 after I had lost so much weight, I was a size 42 and would, at one time, even fit into a size 40 pair of pants.
Last December Renee (Steve's 16yr old daughter) was here for Christmastime, and we went clothes shopping for her. She's a size 40. She's tall and slender. There is just no NO way whatsoever that I would have fit into that size 40 back in 2001 ... it was a TINY pair of pants.
It might just be the style, but I swear everything is much tighter these days ... and I don't just say that cuz I'm rounder ;-)

Oh yes. I hate vanity sizing with a passion. Frankly, I think we ought to switch to something that lists actual measurements - and fake numbers could be false advertising. But when they make up what a "6" (or whatever) means...sheesh.

Seriously, I just want to know if it's going to fit people. I don't let passersby read the tags on my pants, anyway, so why do I care what the number there says - except, of course, when I'm trying to figure out if it will fit, at which time the tag is half-useless.

By the way, if you haven't run into this one yet, the numbers don't only vary from one company to another. They also vary from one product line or even cut to another. So if I try on a pair of pants from company A, in cut/style B, and they fit at size C...I cannot assume that company A, cut/style D, will fit at size C. And in fact, sometimes they won't. REALLY annoying. St. John's Bay (which happens to make some pants that are of a style that will actually fit me nicely) is one company I've run into this with. Quite annoying. Though it's a good bet I won't have to go more than one size either side of the one that worked on the other cut, usually.

Vanity sizing annoys me to no end. I wear a size zero unless the sizing has been changed so that a zero is actually a 2 or a 4, in which case I just can't shop at that store. I've learned which stores carry my size and which don't. At some of them I'd be a -4 if they had such a thing. And it's always the stores with the cutest outfits...

Last summer I decided that I really wanted skirts, since I'd pretty much given up on shorts. I went from store to store to store trying to find skirts that fit me. Hardly any luck. Eventually I bought a pattern and some fabric, and now most of the skirts in my closet are hand made. Drawstrings are a blessing, as well. I went to Goodwill and bought a few skirts and then fitted them with drawstrings so they'll fit me no matter what.

It'll be interesting when I get older where I can find clothes. Right now I can get away with shopping at Aeropostale for jeans, but I'm 20. That won't last for long. Women's sizes don't generally come in zeros, and I don't imagine I'll be gaining weight anytime soon. I suppose I'll just have to learn how to alter things.

I know exactly what you mean. I sewed up a wonderful oriental jacket pattern - then tried it on. To my chagrin it was European sizing, and I assumed it was US standard sizing. So now I have a jacket I cannot wear. It would probably fit you. Now I must decide if I want to try it again with the correct pattern size (grumble)

Ah, I read that as "My encounter with vanity sizing Babylon Five updates" (the font on my browser has a very small dot for a period) and wondered what you were doing to the updates *g*...

Is that what it is? I don't pay attention to the fashion industry in terms of reading. But it's why during the past 10-15 years I've grown to absolutely HATE going shopping for clothes. Shoes are almost as bad. Yes, like everyone, I've gained weight during the past 20 years but certainly not enough to explain all the size differences! But I made up my own theories about what was happening with the clothes.
Theory #1. The clothes are all being made overseas now (South America, China, India, etc) so the size labels were the ones for the women of that country. And since Chinese women are often about the size I was when I was
twenty-five... So I double-checked the labels for the "made in..." A couple of years soon exploded that theory. So I imagined a second theory.
Theory #2. The clothes are being made overseas. The person tagging them either doesn't understand English or doesn't have the time to bother when tagging. So the tagging goes like this--this is the first one I made so it gets a size #1 tag, this is the second one so it's a size #2, and so on and so forth.

Hm. Yes, a lot of men's clothes are sized by actual measurement but that doesn't always mean they're reliable - I've walked out of M&S before now with two pairs of trousers (I did pay for them) with different nominal waist sizes.

Whilst as for those with generic size measurements, it's often anybody's guess - I have shirts in S, M and L sizes, all of which fit me! (And at 5'10" and 38" chest I wouldn't normally regard myself as "small", yet I find that predominantly that tends to be the right size in say polo shirts - T-shirts though would be an L!).

What I can't figure is why in men's shoes I'm a consistent size 7 - I'm not sure if I've ever bought a different size. Yet in woman's shoes it's about 50/50 whether a size 6 or size 7 will fit. Curious.

It seems that over the years, dress sizes have been shrinking even though our actual shapes haven't because some fashion companies believe that a woman will be more likely to buy a smaller size number. I suppose their reasoning is that the woman can then tell herself or her friends, "Look! I fit into a size 6 now!"

This is SO true! I have a gorgeous vintage coctail dress from the early 1960s. The label says that it is a size "8." I am currently wearing a size "4," but the vintage dress is still a little too tight for comfort. I will need to lose another 7-10 lbs before it will fit me, so size 8 is definitely not what it used to be.

The other mystery is why does my girlfriend, who is by no means a particularly large woman (certainly not by American standards), have so much trouble finding anything big enough? Where do all the women much bigger than her find clothes? How did she get to be XXL? She's not all that much bigger than I am. Over on the men's side of the store, I just start with "small" (if they *have* any small) and hope it's small enough. Often it isn't, but there is no such thing as a men's extra-small. She can hardly ever find anything labeled XL, but the men's side always has a plentiful supply of XXXLs that are big enough for me to hold a social gathering in.

Vanity sizes annoy me. I've been about a 12 (long arms) and occasionally a 10 (short torso) "forever" -- but anymore when I'm shopping I have to look at everything from size 8 though "XL".

But that said, I understand part of why one of my somewhat larger friends likes them. The nosy mother-in-law, who snoots about large sizes. And pokes though her clothes. And if said MiL were to see numbers like "14" rather than those like "38" that would remove some of the tension, as that would be one fewer thing to snoot about.