Women’s clothing sizing is messed up. The size on the label doesn’t seem to have any relationship to the actual measurements of the garment or to the same labeled size at other brands. The “standard” way clothes are sized is far from perfect. And, really, there is no one “standard” way to size clothing.
There are no rules. You can size your designs however you want. Some brands have. They’ve bucked the system and created their own names for sizes and set their own grade rules for how the measurements change with each size. There are certainly advantages to reimagining sizing to better fit your customers.
There are also drawbacks to deviating from the norm even though the norm is not great. Mainly, it can confuse your customer. Even though a customer may wear a slightly different size in different brands, she usually has a general idea of what size she wears (i.e. usually a large, but sometimes size medium). With alpha (S, M, L, etc.) or numeric (6,8,10, etc.) sizing, she understands what size is bigger or smaller. She knows that if the 10 is too big, try the 8.
You may have created the best-fitting new sizing system for your brand, but you now have a communication hurdle to get over. How will your customer know that they wear a size purple in your brand? If that doesn’t fit, is it the size pink or the size teal that is one size smaller? Even with a new system for sizing, you still might find yourself being compared to traditional sizes.
The problem with sizing is both a technical one and a communication one. How do you approach sizing for your brand?