What Size Am I in Vintage? Why the Label Can't Tell You

The honest starting point is that the number on a vintage label is not a size. It is a number that meant something specific in the decade it was printed, under a standard that no longer exists, in a country that may not be yours. Two garments marked 12, made twenty years apart, can differ by several inches through the chest.

There was a standard, and it was thrown away

The United States did once have a national sizing system. It came out of a body-measurement study conducted in 1939. Statisticians reduced the survey down to five figures they judged sufficient to describe a woman's size and shape: weight, height, bust girth, waist girth and hip girth. The National Bureau of Standards distributed the results to the garment industry in 1953, the industry formally accepted them in 1957, and in 1958 they were published as Commercial Standard CS 215-58.

It was revised in 1971, when the Department of Commerce reissued it as PS 42-70 under a new name, the Voluntary Product Standard. The word voluntary is doing the work in that sentence. Manufacturers had already begun ignoring the recommendations through the 1970s, and in January 1983 the standard was withdrawn altogether.

Nothing mandatory replaced it. The American Society for Testing and Materials published voluntary standards in 1995 — including, sensibly, a separate set acknowledging that body shape changes with age — and revised them in 2011 and again in 2021. Most companies do not use them.

What that means for a garment on a rail

It means the label records a manufacturer's private decision, taken in a particular year, in a market with no referee. Since 1983 the pressure on that decision has run one way: a label that flatters sells better than one that does not. The drift is real and it is well documented in the trade. What is not well documented is the exact conversion — you will find charts online claiming a given decade's 12 equals a modern 6, and they are guesses dressed as data.

One figure is worth quoting because it comes from the standard itself rather than from a chart: under the measurements set out in CS 215-58, the average 155-pound woman should have been wearing a size 16. She is now more likely to be buying a 10.

So the drift is not a rumour. But the specific number on the garment in front of you cannot be converted by formula, because there is no formula — only a manufacturer, a year, and a decision nobody was obliged to justify.

Measure the garment, not yourself

The way out of this is simple and slightly unglamorous. Stop asking what size a piece is and start asking what it measures. A tape measure is not affected by fashion, marketing or the year of manufacture.

Four measurements settle most garments. Take them flat, on a table, with the piece closed and smoothed but not stretched, and double the ones that go across the body.

Chest, armpit to armpit

Lay the garment flat and measure straight across from one underarm seam to the other. Double it for the full circumference. This is the single most useful number on a coat, and the one most often missing from a listing.

Shoulder to shoulder

Across the back, from the point where one shoulder seam meets the sleeve to the same point on the other side. This is the measurement that decides whether a coat will ever look right on you, because it is the one thing a tailor cannot easily change.

Sleeve length

From the shoulder seam to the cuff. On a raglan or a dropped shoulder there is no seam to start from, so measure from the base of the collar instead and say which method you used — the two are not comparable.

Total length

From the base of the collar at the back down to the hem. This tells you where a coat will sit on you, which for outerwear is most of the silhouette.

Then compare it to something you already own

Not to a size chart. Take a coat from your own wardrobe that fits the way you want the new one to fit, measure it the same four ways, and compare the numbers directly. This removes every variable at once — your body, the decade, the country, the manufacturer's opinion of what 12 means.

It also handles the thing charts cannot: ease. A 1960s cocoon coat and a 1990s tailored overcoat can share an identical chest measurement and feel nothing alike, because one was cut to hang away from the body and the other to follow it. Comparing garment to garment captures that. Comparing your body to a chart does not.

What measurements will not tell you

They are not the whole answer, and it is worth being clear about the limits.

They do not describe drape. A heavy melton and a fluid crepe with the same numbers will sit differently on the same shoulders. They do not account for what is worn underneath — a coat measured for a shirt is a different coat over a thick knit. They say nothing about how a silhouette was designed to be worn, and vintage silhouettes were often designed around undergarments that are no longer in use.

They also cannot be taken from a photograph. If a listing does not give measurements, no amount of looking will supply them.

Sizing marks from other countries and other decades

A German 40, an Italian 44, a French 40 and a British 12 are not interchangeable, and the conversions published today were built for current garments. Applied backwards to a coat made in 1975 they carry the same problem as domestic sizing: they assume a standard that the garment was never made to.

Treat a foreign size mark the same way as a domestic one — as a clue about where and roughly when a piece was made, not as an instruction. On older European outerwear the mark is often the only surviving evidence of origin, which makes it interesting, but it still is not a fit.

The short version

The label is a historical artefact. The measurements are the fact. Where a listing gives them, use them and compare against a garment you own. Where it does not, ask before you buy rather than after — for a one-of-a-kind piece there is no second one to exchange it for, and a question costs nothing.

Measurements are noted on listings where we have them, and where they are not shown you can ask us through the chat or the contact form and we will measure the piece for you. For the practical side of judging fit before you commit, read how to know if a vintage piece will fit you. Or start with the overcoats, where the four numbers above matter most.