et tu, Levi? (Vanity sizing from an old friend)

Controversy about women's clothing sizes--and women's body sizes--is well known to any woman, whether cute young fashionista or mall-shopping grandmother. Part of the shopping experience is the absolute necessity of trying on jeans and trousers before purchase.

The occasional knit top might be bought on the fly, but a garment that has to fit the hips and tummy, plus the legs (in both circumference and length), requires a fitting room with a three-way mirror, plus an armload of possibilities for trying on, probably in several different sizes, because sizing is ephemeral.

The famous New York chain store which anchors our local mall has set up its in-house brands so that I fit into a size 8. Very flattering, except that similar garments in fashion brands not made under the store's label, I fit into a 10. And then there's Levi Strauss, the blue jeans I have worn throughout my life, starting way back when they were still made in San Francisco, and I was living there.

My first pair of grown-up Levi's, rigid denim with a daisy label inside proclaiming "for girls" was purchased circa 1970, and worn until motherhood, and waistline expansion, sent them to the Goodwill. I've gotten more than a few pairs since then, and I've always known approximately where I fit on the size scale through the years.

And then yesterday I discovered that the size 14 petite Levis from last year are exactly the same as the size 12 petite Levis from this year. Both are about the same as the size 8 (with hemmed-up legs) from the famous New York store.

There has been a lot of talk about size 0 models over the last few years, and folks like me have wondered how anyone can really be size 0.

According to my clothes-buying experience, the new size 8 is the old size 14 of 30 years ago, so this paradigm follows, new sizing on the left, old sizing on the right:

12 = 18 10 = 16 8 = 14 6 = 12 4 = 10 2 = 8 0 = 6

I suspect that Levi Strauss may have been one of the last holdouts against "vanity sizing" and now even they have given up.

We aren't really getting thinner, ladies. Our clothes are getting bigger!