Interesting Links for 09-01-2012

[andrewducker]

• Will shareholders crack down on executive pay? (No, probably not)
  (tags: business pay uk )
• Why clothes look so much better on celebrities than they do on you.
  (tags: fashion clothes )
• EA Invokes First Amendment Protection for Video Games in Trademark Dispute with Helicopter Maker
  (tags: trademark videogames freespeech usa )
• The evil plot behind

Comments

[marrog]

This is why it's been on my to-do list forever to learn to alter my own clothes. The big secret (which I tell everyone so you probably already know) to why I always wear men's shirts with fitted ladies' waistcoats is that it's not because I'm a Huge Dyke; it's because shaped women's shirts don't fit me, even slightly. By the time I've found the enormous size that will go over my washerwoman arms, the body is so tent-like that even tailoring would be a joke. The assumption seems to be that fat women are these perfectly round balls with stalks for arms and legs - I have similar issues finding trousers that fit me on the hips without gaping at the waist and can basically only wear wide-leg as a result. My whole fashion concept - which has now become for many people part of my identity - is actually shaped not by taste but by what I can physically wear.

Additionally, I recently had a (fruitless as everything cost too much) hunt in John Lewis for clothes and discovered from a woman there that the high street is now nearly two sizes different from Proper measurements that the more designer labels use. So when I thought I'd ballooned three sizes in the past decade, I actually only changed by one and a wee bit. Which being an egomaniac I'd always suspected, but still, wtf, amirite?

[cairmen]

That's very interesting to hear! (I evidently hadn't been around when you mentioned it before either!).

I'm still amused to discover how much vanity sizing goes into high-street men's clothes these days, too. Whilst I was on the diet last year, I needed new jeans - and discovered that M&S were enthusiastically trying to persuade me I was 2-4 inches smaller around the waist than I actually was...

[channelpenguin]

The other downside of this downsizing is that the smallest size gets larger - my BF is slightly built and wiry and often can't find stuff to fit at all now in high street stores for this reason (I have a similar issue).

[brixtonbrood]

Young women's clothes do now regularly come in size 6 though, which was unheard of when I was a young woman - the reason being of course that that's the size formerly known as 8/10. Rarely seen in grown-up women's shops though.

[naath]

Indeed. My experience is that if you are whatever is currently deemed a size 10, 12 or 14 you can have clothes that roughly fit. If you aren't well LOL, you better like dressing like a 14 year old or a sack of potatoes. (And the current notion of what a size 10 is 6-10 inches larger than it was 20 years ago; at least in most high street shops).

(having been both a size 6 and a size 16... yeah, I hate clothes shops a WHOLE LOT; I especially hate their lieing size charts)

[rosamicula]

I elljayed about an outfit I was wearing one day, when I realised I was wearing a size 10 (very flared) skirt, a size 16 camisole, a gent's small sweater, a gents' large hat, childrens' size 4 shoes, a (vintage) size 20 jacket, and plus size tights.

[naath]

Heh. Or maybe "Halp, clothes sizes are impossible".

[rosamicula]

Waht really peeves me is when sizes are inconsistent within the same store. I do like the quality and colour ranges in Uniqlo, especially for smartish work tops, but have come out of their January sales with tops in every size form small to xlarge.

And bras? God what a hell bra shopping is.

[i_ate_my_crusts]

Size 6 was reasonably common round here (read:Adelaide, Australia) in 1983, when I started shopping for myself.

[brixtonbrood]

Ah, yes, I mean UK size 6 - aka US size 2/4, aka Australian sized 8 according to internet size converters.

[channelpenguin]

Oh ditto on the shirts. I dunno who they make them to fit!! I recently find men's XS fitted from Next fit me quite well - but I am moderately broad-shouldered, long armed/backed and wiry with not much of a bust (34B).

Oh, tell me about Proper Measurements! Because my own observation (by comparing 10-yr old clothes with new where they both still fit) is that street sizes have got BIGGER for the same 'dress size' number. So I am confused... (I am talking in the 8,10,12 range)

When I had to get a formal dress for a wedding I actually got a strapless boned top and skirt and got both altered - the waist of the skirt a little in and the whole under-bust to waist area of the top a LOT in. I knew this was the way having had to alter similar tops in the past!

For me, women's clothes are too short in the back and arms, too narrow across the shoulders, loose in the lower torso but tight in the arms - and often the shoulders do NOT scale with increasing size elsewhere - which seems counterintuitive...

[woodpijn]

my own observation (by comparing 10-yr old clothes with new where they both still fit) is that street sizes have got BIGGER for the same 'dress size' number. So I am confused... (I am talking in the 8,10,12 range)

That matches my observations exactly.

Maybe the small sizes have got bigger and the big sizes have got smaller?

[channelpenguin]

that's what I was thinking...

[threegoldfish]

I've been contemplating this for a while and my husband got me a sewing machine for Xmas. Guess I'm going to have to put my money where my mouth is!