Sizing
Fifteen letter labels, eight actual sizes
Small, S and a lowercase s are the same size written by three different people. The letters are noise. The inches are not.
The letters do not agree with each other
Across the adult side of this catalogue there are fifteen distinct letter labels doing the work of eight sizes. Extra small is written both ways. Small is written three ways. None of that variation means anything about fit. It means the paperwork came from different desks.
Worse, a letter is a claim about a body and a garment is an object with a chest measurement. A medium nightgown and a medium robe are not obliged to agree, and usually do not, because a robe is meant to close over something else.
The girls pieces are a different system
Girls sleepwear here does not carry letters at all. It carries numeric runs, and those are not a translation of the letters into numbers. A girls 10-12 is not a small; there is no row anywhere that turns one into the other, and treating them as two spellings of the same thing is how people end up with a robe that fits nobody in the house.
The runs also overlap on purpose. 6X sits between 6 and 7 and is not an age at all. If you are buying for a child who is between runs, the chart matters even more than it does for an adult, because the letter that would have given you a rough idea is not there to lean on.
| What it means | Labels we found | Pieces |
|---|---|---|
| Extra small | XS X-Small | 63 |
| Small | S Small s | 100 |
| Medium | M Medium | 41 |
| Large | L Large | 19 |
| Extra large | XL X-Large | 11 |
| Plus 1X | 1X | 10 |
| Plus 2X | 2X XXL | 7 |
| Plus 3X | 3X | 12 |
| Run | Pieces |
|---|---|
12M | 1 |
4 | 11 |
5-6 | 10 |
6X | 2 |
7-8 | 4 |
10-12 | 8 |
14-16 | 7 |
What we publish instead
Most of our pieces carry a measurement chart taken from the garment: chest, waist, hip, length, inseam, in inches, size by size. That is a physical fact about the thing rather than an opinion about you.
The method that works is dull and reliable. Find something in your wardrobe that already fits the way you want this to fit. Lay it flat. Measure it across the chest from seam to seam and double it. Compare that number to the chart. Ignore the letter entirely.
Where letters still matter
Two places. If a piece has no chart, the letter is all there is, and it is worth reading the listing carefully before deciding. And if you are between two rows on a chart, the shape decides: go up for robes and one piece pyjamas, which need room to wrap or to layer over, and stay down for leggings and thermals, which are meant to sit close.
