We’ve all been there, haven’t we? You find yourself desperately trying to squeeze into a size 12 in one store before realising that it is no good, the zip will likely break before it gets any higher than half way and then in the next shop, you have to ask the sales assistant if they can find you a size 8 to try because the size 10 is, well, falling off?

If you haven’t been there, you’re lucky. (Or like my mum and refuse to try anything on in store!)

 This summer Gemma, of Retro Chick, launched her Campaign for Clearer Clothes Sizing. This is a topic that I have been meaning to write about here for some time but, as with many things, it has stayed on my “to do” list almost too long. I’m going to change that now.

My mum is probably a good example of how sizes in stores have changed over time: she has a pencil skirt from Marks and Spencer from the 80s or 90s in a size 8 that fits like a glove, today a size 8 in Marks and Spencer is more likely to fall straight off her. Her shape hasn’t changed one bit in the last 30 years but the sizing in the store has. Another example: in Gap, a pair of size 8 trousers might fit like a glove but a size 8 skirt will fall off me – they are the same size, in the same store, in the same week!

Between stores it is even more of a nightmare, whilst I’m a size 10 in Topshop, an 8 in H&M, I’m a size 6 in Next! Surely I can’t be all of these sizes?

For years now it seems to have been a given, accepted even, that the sizes on clothes’ labels are getting smaller while the clothes themselves are getting bigger. All of which makes knowing what size you are from shop to shop and year to year virtually impossible.

A survey at the end of last year for Which? magazine found that more than 9 in 10 women take different sizes into the changing with them because they don’t know which will fit the best. Indeed 82% of those surveyed“think retailers should be clearer about the measurements they use”. Now if that isn’t endorsement enough for Gemma’s Campaign, I don’t know what is!

The point of Gemma’s Campaignis not to create universal sizing – we’re all different and having different stores cut clothes differently actually helps all of us to find different clothes that fit our shapes and bodies. Instead, Gemma is calling for Clearer Clothes Sizing, she says:

“I think clothes stores should be made to put the measurements they use to cut their patterns on the labels of their clothes. They should be made to publish their size charts online in a clearly marked location (not hidden in the customer service section) and have a link to it from every garment they sell. Unhappy, frustrated customers don’t buy clothes. Customers that never go in your store because they don’t know that actually you cut clothes that would fit their non-average bodies are a customer lost. So it’s in shops interest to be clearer about their procedures.”

At the end of Gemma’s post she issues a call to arms, so to speak, and asks that if you feel as passionately about this issue as she and others do, to write about this, if you have a blog, and, if you feel so inclined, write to your MP and/or MEP calling on them to carry out a review of clothing sizing in the UK and Europe and telling them that you think that measurement labelling should be mandatory. I have teamed up with Gemma to write a standard letter to MPs/MEPs, that will hopefully be available to you to copy and paste very soon. In the meantime, you can find out who your elected representatives are and how to contact them by visiting WriteToThem.