‘It says it’s large, but it’s a medium’
Independent Online, South Africa
The size said large, but there was no way the zip would go higher than Lynne de Maid’s waist. The silk dress was exactly what she was looking for, the R1 595 price tag was fine with her budget, and the size marked in the dress was hers.
But we were soon to find that nothing De Maid tried on in her size would fit her.
Waterfront designer stores didn’t appear to stock anything larger than a 14 and even what they had was too small for a regular size 14.
Weekend Argus accompanied 40-something De Maid this week as she went from store to store in the Waterfront to find something to wear.
The wealthy retired Welsh lawyer had the Cape Argus SMS column ablaze when she lamented that size 14s at the Waterfront were in fact size 10s or 12s.
She and two wealthy friends spent a fruitless day shopping at the Waterfront recently. Her friends went back to the UK disgusted, saying that they had wanted to spend a fortune on clothes in Cape Town, only to find that nothing would fit their size-14 bodies.
Many of the subsequent SMSes agreed with her, some went on to complain that chain stores were also incorrectly sizing their garments.
De Maid, who lives in Camps Bay, is by no means a large woman – she looks like a regular size 14. The white jeans she was wearing were a size 34, but the clothes she tried on said something different.
Some dresses could not be zipped up; one or two were far too snug; one beautiful dress, with a R2 203 price tag, was done up with press studs on the side and the only way De Maid could stop it from bursting open was to hold her breath.
We erupted in gales of laughter imagining how she would pop out of the dress at a cocktail function if she were to lean over the bar.
The assistant said they had a sizing problem. “It says it’s large, but it’s a medium,” she said by way of apology.
De Maid had choice things to say about Cape Town fashion. Besides clothes being incorrectly sized they were also often badly cut, and made to ill-thought-through designs.
A number of outfits would have worked better had they dropped a waistline, or used a different colour lining on another dress. And what was with all the black?
“It’s summer for goodness sake, where is the colour?”
Maybe boutiques thought people who could afford designer clothes were all skinny, we mused to store assistants, who helpfully said their sizes were “cut small”.
At Lulu Tan Tan a silk dress, size 36, in beautiful colours almost had De Maid crying out in frustration. But there was no way the zip was going to go up.
At the widest part the gap measured about 20cm.
“This would be an amazing dress for an evening do, I love it,” she said, holding it up. The helpful store assistant said their dresses were cut on the small side.
At Diesel we were told the clothing came sized from Italy. Here, too, a pretty top in size large was too small.
By then De Maid was thoroughly ticked off. “What is the point of trying on all these clothes just to find nothing fits? It’s just depressing. They have the psychology all wrong – the stores should size their large sizes medium and their extra-large, large.
“I hope this will start people thinking why should we accept what they want us to buy, when we should be telling them what we want to buy.”
Fashion journalist Emma Jordan concurred with De Maid. She said clever designers should change size 12 to size 14. But designers also say some clothes only look good on smaller people.
“There is an assumption if you are bigger you can’t be fashionable,” she said.
Jordan added that many designers were also not making use of garment technologists, who measured, checked sizes, checked if the garment moved correctly and stretched in the right places.
“More consideration needs to go into sizing garments,” Jordan said.
Woolworths came in for a lot of flak in the SMS column, with many readers complaining that its sizes were incorrect.
In response, the company said it was passionately South African, customers were its first priority and it was committed to offering stylish, quality garments at the best possible value.
“Woolworths sizing standards are in keeping with the national standards,” said the chain in a statement. “However, the fit of a size can be marginally different from garment to garment, depending on the style of the item, eg, a pair of size 10 skinny jeans will be a slimmer fit than a pair of size 10 regular jeans.
“Woolworths sizes go up to 22/24 in selected items. Sales history determines the range and volume of sizes allocated to each store.”
