Women's clothing sizes: Random, yet important

There’s some science to back up our fixation with size: In a survey conducted last spring by Talbots, the national chain, 62 percent of women said they’d only consider clothes in their specific size when shopping. Asked whether they’d go up from that size, 46 percent said they’d go one size larger; only 24 percent said they’d go up two sizes. The margin of error was plus or minus three percent.

There’s no question, says Betsy Thompson, fashion director for Talbots, that “women are size-focused when they’re shopping — regardless of what they say.” But, she adds, your customers need to know you’re consistent. “When women see a great variance, they question it.”

In other words, some consumers won’t appreciate it. Lynemarie D’Amore of Evanston, Ill., a frequent online buyer, is frustrated to find her usual sizes are now too big. “It just makes me have to return more, and hate shopping more,” she says. And she stops trusting the clothing line: “It’s like when you catch a lover in a lie.”

Not every woman cares about size. Some are more like, well, men, who tend to be more pragmatic. “I think many men do care about what size their waist is,” says New Yorker James Cribbs. “However, I can’t imagine any of them would buy something they don’t like just because it fits. Why not move on until you find something that fits AND that you like?”

Sounds so sensible. It certainly would avoid tales like that of Steiner’s hot pink, “it-was-the-size-2-talking” purchase.

She wore the dress once, to a wedding, where she covered it with a shawl. “I wanted to pull out the size label and show people why I bought it,” she laughs. She ended up lending it to a friend, who also wore it once.

So did the friend like it?

“She was happy to be a size 2.”