Do Italian Clothes Run Small? A Short History of Sizing Explained
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Time to read 4 min
‘Oh, you’re selling Italian clothes? They’ll be all too small for me then.’ If we got 1€ every time someone said this to us, we wouldn’t be opening our second boutique right now, we’d be sipping Pina Coladas on a tropical beach while the BIF empire was run by top CEOs instead of this mother-daughter duo.
Granted, that’s slightly overdramatic. But the assumption itself is real: the idea that Italian clothes run small has lingered for decades. It might have held some truth at a certain point in fashion history - but today, it’s largely a stubborn myth. Let’s take it apart.
Where Do Clothing Sizes Come From?
To understand the differences in sizing depending on country, we need to understand where clothing sizes even come from. Up until the mid-19th century, clothes were custom-made to fit the woman that would be wearing the item in the future. Sizing, as we know it today, didn’t exist, simply because there was no need for it.
We won’t go over the whole of fashion history and its socio-politico-economical origins, influences and results, but let’s just say: life as women lived it in previous centuries changed drastically over the next centuries, and so did their need for clothes.
That meant saying bye to restrictive hourglass corsets and elaborate custom dresses, and hello to more practical attire that would allow more movement.
In come department stores, catalogues and ready-to-wear collections - and with them, a need for sizes. A lot of trial and error took place - from naming sizes after ages (so, for example, any 16-year-old girl would wear a size 16) up to sizes that only considered bust measurements - until sizing became a topic of US-national importance.
When Sizing Became a National Concern
No, we’re not kidding. On 25th December 1939, TIME published an article, titled ‘No Boondoggling’, that was addressed specifically to women and elaborated on the problem of not having standard sizes.
“Altering garments to fit the infinite variety of women’s figures keeps a great many people busy; but it annually costs U. S. manufacturers an estimated $10,000,000”, read the article in which the Department of Agriculture and the WPA asked women all over New Jersey to get their measurements taken in one of the 59 places that were designated for that specific purpose. The goal? “To create a new, unified system of sizing women’s clothing.”
While the project started in New Jersey, it encompassed different states with about 15,000 women being measured in the process. The result of this large-scale intervention was the so-called ‘Commercial Standard CS 215-58’ sizing that, while impressive, was an absolute failure, commercially speaking.
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The reasons for this were diverse: the system was mainly based around bust measurements, it concentrated on different body types (aka ‘slender’, ‘average’, or ‘full’), the majority of the system was based on white women from a poorer socio-economic background (that had taken part in the survey to get the participation fee), …
We could go on and on about the reasons why the system as such didn’t work. The fact stays the same though: it was later withdrawn and replaced by voluntary industry standards.
Europe’s Attempt at a Unified Size Guide
On the other side of the globe, Spanish master tailor Juan de Alcega published his ‘Libro de Geometric Practica y Traca’ already in the late 1580s, which was the first known book to discuss mathematically constructed tailoring.
It wasn’t until 2006 that Europe officially introduced actual sizing standards in form of ‘EN 13402 - European standard for clothing sizes’ which is based on actual body measurements - not types or fabrics. The idea was that, instead of labels saying ‘size 38’ for example, it would say ‘bust 88’.
In theory, that system still exists and has influenced some manufacturers, but in practice, it never replaced national sizing systems.
Why? Because customers are too used to their familiar size descriptions and numbers, because ‘vanity sizing’ exists (topic for another time) and because each country has an established sizing system.
MET MUSEUM | Extract from Juan de Alcega's ‘Libro de Geometric Practica y Traca’
Do Italian Clothes Run Small?
Historically speaking, Italian clothes have indeed a reputation of running smaller. If we consider this on a factual level, it’s not really as black and white. The first misconception comes from the size guide they follow which is IT38, IT40 and so on, and so forth.
To break it down easily: an Italian size is a German standard size, plus 4. So, if you usually wear a German size 36, you’d be considered an Italian 40. Sounds bigger, but it’s actually just another way of saying the same thing. Another reason is that Italian fashion has always been cut in a more tailored, fitted manner which reinforced this stereotype.
But, just like fashion trends evolve, so do Italian designs. So, do Italian clothes run small? In short: no - they simply follow a different numbering system and an oversized blazer that’s cut in an oversized manner will be oversized, no matter if it’s Italian, German, French or American.
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The Rise of S/M and M/L Sizing
Just as we all evolve, so do size guides - even the Italian ones. With the rise of more casual and comfortable attire, oversized fits and fluid fabrics, the need for strict sizing dissipated more and more.
In 2020, the pandemic accelerated this process and added more financial interest to this transition. And so, brands started to move away from strict numeric sizing and more towards overarching sizes like S/M, M/L and L/XL. Fewer sizes mean less production effort and less risk of wasting inventory.
For those of you who are in-between sizes, here’s a simplified explanation: if you’re a size M, for instance, you can take either a size S/M for a more fitted look, or a size M/L for a more oversized fit. Same goes for size L.
How to Find Your Perfect Size
All of this to say: Italian clothes aren’t cut smaller and arguably never were - they’ve just been tailored in a different fashion which made them appear smaller. This is not to say that knowing what size to choose for yourself is always easy, especially when you’re shopping online.
To facilitate the process, we’ve started including product measurements into our Size & Fit section, specifically for ‘One Size’ articles (that seriously, don’t make the choice any easier) and in-between sizes.
Because if history shows us one thing, it’s that an international size guide is unlikely to establish itself any time soon.
