That probably explains why I like my Old Navy shorts so much...

I'm not surprised by H&M being more accurate (and I bet this is the case for the more trendy brands, H&M being the closest thing to trendy on the list) -- from personal experience as a man with extra thickness and in this general size-range, the the 36-40 inch waste isn't even part of their target market. So there's no reason to have vanity sizing -- or not much.

I am surprised as a European that H&M is so accurate. Zara is not included in the survey but usually there is a two size difference between what I get at Zara and what I get at H&M, H&M being the smaller size. I always thought my Zara size was the right one, and that H&M was just trying to make me feel good about my body. Does this mean Zara performs un-vanity sizing? Or that none of this translates to the other side of the ocean?

I remember seeing this when it was originally posted elsewhere, and someone made a good comment - you have to make sure that all the pants were the same stile / rise. Although it might not be as pronounced with men as with women, whether the pant sits on the waist or hip will make a difference in the actual inches, and the 36" is supposed to refer to the waist size. With current pants trending lower rises, i would expect the actual inches to be larger than the "size".

Again, its hard to tell, because they don't give much information. Another thing to consider would be if they were jeans, how much shrinking could be expected when washed/dried?

I always thought that the 36 inches referred to the size of your waist, not the size of the waistband in inches. Clothes should have what designers refer to as "ease" - i.e.the difference between the body measurement and the garment measurement, and this differs based on whether a garment is supposed to be tightly or loosely fitted.

I'm with the people who wonder how ease factored into this- also there's the fact that men's pants tend to not fit around the actual waist, most men wear them lower on the body, whether just below the belly or further down the hips.

Well, there is also the simple conclusion that people get fatter and fatter and that clothing norms have to be adapted...

I think this is true for shoes as well, you'll tend to wear a smaller size in more expensive shoes.

I've seen this study before, or one like it. It would be interesting to see a graph of "fly length vs. waistband" to see how the size is affected by rise. I'd also be interested to see if if the variation is the same in different sizes - if the size 36 is actually 38", is the size 42 actually 44" or is it 45"? Is there more "vanity" in larger sizes than small?

I would love to do a study to see if vanity sizing actually makes people feel better or buy more clothes.

I am surprised that men's pants have vanity sizing, as I always thought that the definitive inches measurement meant that that's what the size of the waistband was. Some of you are saying, though, that the measurement just means it's supposed to fit a waist of that size, not that the pants measure as such.

But I do wonder how the measurements from each store were gathered. Was only one pair of pants measured at each store? I would think that the measured size could vary greatly depending on what style the pants were, and whether they were young men's or men's pants (I worked at a department store, and we had this distinction, not sure whether this would come into play in most stores). Plus, in women's pants I have had different pants in the exact same size and style fit differently, due to slight variations in the sewing I suppose.

Seems to me that it's obviously not the most scientific study, but still interesting to me to see how high the waistbands are over the measurements at some of the stores.

My quality of life got *so much better* when I stopped identifying with a particular size, and just started to go with what fit. In some brands, I wear a medium. In others, I wear a large, or even (gasp!) an EXTRA LARGE. It doesn't matter. I'm just as chubby in a size-n pair of pants as I am in a size-(n+4), and nobody except me knows what size I'm wearing.

The fact that "vanity sizing" is a profitable strategy for clothing manufacturers just shows how many people feel bad about themselves because of some arbitrary number, and that makes me sad.

Gentlemen: the number on your waistband is in NO WAY relevant to your personal worth. I know it's not easy, but let's all try to move on!

The size listed on the garment corresponds to the size of the body it's meant to fit. Depending on how loose the waistband is, it's not uncommon to have several inches of ease (also if it doesn't sit at the natural waist there can be a discrepancy).

I did my own survey of the body measurements for a women's Size 8:

OLD NAVY
Waist: 28
Hips: 39

H&M
Waist: 28
Hips: 37.5

CALVIN KLEIN
Waist: 28
Hips: Not provided

DOCKERS
Waist: 29.5
Hips: 39

LEVIS
Waist: 28-29
Hips: 38-39

LEE
Waist: 28.75-29.75
Hips: 38.25-39.25

Garment makers also have a thing known as a "sloper" which is the imaginary body that the pattern is made to fit, usually a shape of average dimensions. But EVERY person's body differs from the sloper. There's a lot of variation, more than you'd think just by looking at a group of humans. So, depending on the dimensions of the sloper they used, one brand may fit you better than another because the sloper is closer to your actual body measurements. Simple things like textile content or stretch can also make a difference, so sizing vs how it fits on your body is basically a total crapshoot.

More about a sloper: http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/4498/the-merits-of-a-basic-fitting-pattern

No wonder these 34/32 Old Navy jeans are falling off, while I can barely squeeze into my 34 Levi's.

While I understand the mentality behind vanity sizing and why it works, I absolutely hate it in practice... This is because the smallest size in those stores that take a lot of liberty in their vanity sizing is always far too big for me.

Speaking from the smaller end of the spectrum, it's almost impossible for me to find clothes that will fit me without having to go to the children's section. And the stores that do carry things in sizes that fit me are extremely overpriced (Abercrombie, for example).

Just my two cents. (Back into lurkdom, I go!)

What you don't mention is WHY any given store would vanity size or not (just a note, I hate the entire concept. Just add larger sizes if the average size is going up, FFS). H+M is not marketing to the same demographic as Calvin Klein, who is not marketing to the same demographic as Docker's, Gap, or Old Navy. I can't say much about men's sizes, not really having looked into them all that much, but the women's vanity sizing is much the same. Places have their sizes set for a reason, and no, it's not always to 'keep out the fat riff-raff,' like some will claim, or even just to make their customer base 'feel better' about themselves. H+M is marketing specifically at a young demographic, from young teens to people in their late 20s. Yes, people of all ages DO shop their, but their target demographic is probably something like 13-30 (also keep in mind that H+M has two separate clothing lines, one that runs significantly smaller than the other which is aimed at younger teens). People in this age group, no matter what you say about the 'average American,' are on average smaller than the 'average American,' because they are younger (and no, this does not mean to imply that there are NO large people in this demographic, just that they are, on average, smaller for a number of reasons). If the average 45 year old woman is a size 14, but the average 15 year old girl is a size 7 and the average 22 year old woman is a size 9, H+M, who's target demographic includes a lot of 15 year old girls and 22 year old women but very few 45 year old women, will center their teen line around the average 15 year old girl, and their generic line around the average 22 year old woman, totally ignoring the 45 year old woman, because they don't appeal to her anyway. However, Old Navy's demographic includes a LOT of 45 year old women. If they only carry sizes 0 through 14, they think 'let's make the size 10 equivalent to what is generally accepted to be a 14, because then our target demographic will be more likely to come here and give us money.' And at least for H+M (I haven't been in an Old Navy in years, so I don't know exactly what sizes they carry), that is true. In their generic young adult line, I am a 2 generally, sometimes a 4. In their teen line, located in the same store, I can be a 4, or even a 6 or an 8. Their young adult line also carries a wider range of sizes (I believe 2-14, as opposed to 2-10 for the teen line). Silly as it is from a casual shopper's POV, from a marketing POV, it makes perfect sense. Most of the people buying their generic young adult and specialty lines are in their 20s, like I am, and I fall somewhat on the smaller side of the typical 20-something shopping there. However, I'm not very small by the teen sizes standards, because I'm not particularly small when compared to the demographic shopping in that particular section, aimed at girls ranging from as young as 10 or 11 years old to maybe 18 or so. At GAP and Old Navy, I'd be the smallest available size, if that (these guys are the worst offender; what was a size 6 in GAP in the early/mid 90s literally is smaller than the 0 now).

One of the hidden perks of uneven vanity sizing that benefits all of these retailers mutually is that it helps them to compete against non-storefront businesses far more successfully than, say, book or record stores.

Not so long ago, the ready-to-wear clothing retail market was dominated by catalogues; with basic empirical measurements, you could easily order clothes that you could reasonably expect to fit you (granted, in those years a bit of alteration was expected). In theory, the catalogue system could be vastly more efficient with the internet. The convenience and savings it would afford to people who aren't well-served by the nearest shops - or aren't able to reach them due to opening hours or lack of transport - could conceivably outweigh the disadvantage of not getting to try clothes on for comfort. But if we're trained to assume that our size will vary from brand to brand, we'll intuitively depend on shopping in godawful places such as malls. More of us have by now gotten comfortable with choosing books, songs, electronics, travel itineraries, friends, and sex partners on the internet than clothes.

This is not exactly a conspiracy theory; I'm not privy to any covert arrangement between H&M and Old Navy to confuse the meaning of 36 inches. But it does set off an alarm knowing that several of the brands with widely divergent label-to-actual-size ratios are owned by the same company.

This is not vanity sizing! The author of the linked article clearly doesn't understand the concept of ease: any clothing which is not intended to be skin tight needs to be larger than the measurements of the person wearing it. So a pair of pants for a 36" waist will always measure larger than 36"! The Old Navy pants run big and the H&M pants actually run small, but the others have about the right amount of ease.

Not terribly long ago, my sister asked what my pants size was. I told her that it was somewhere between 32 and 36. She didn't understand how I could be that unsure of what size pants I wore. I had to explain to her that I had size 36 pants that were tight on me and size 32 pants that sagged.

Crud, I don't have time to go through all the comments but I will four days from now (few discussions on "vanity sizing" are worth the effort of response).

Case in point: there is no such thing as vanity sizing. Really. It is better described as size evolution, sizing to the mean for each given customer profile. A very long story. Speaking of, I wrote nigh on 20 entries about it.

I've had no problem buying men's pants on the internet by waist size and inseam. These seem to have a pretty uniform meaning across manufacturers. I believe that the original poster was confused about ease and where the pants were meant to sit on the body.

Perhaps the poster should do a little learning about how garments are made and designed before making erroneous comments based on a misunderstanding of a technology that used to be taught in high schools.

Ive always found this true. A "womens'" low-rise skinny Jean is at most stores a size 4 or 5 for me, but at Old Navy (this is in Canada) I find a size 1 much too roomy - It goes up over my navel when I sit down.

Whatever. You guys update too much