New York Fashion Week May Be Changing, But the Sizing Stays the Same

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Published on February 23, 2022 @ 11:58AM

The Size Report: Fashion Week May Be Changing, But the Sizing Stays the Same — Photo: Getty Images

With New York Fashion Week in the rearview, it's impossible to ignore how much it has changed over the last decade. For the Fall 2022 season, several established designers were missing from the official Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) calendar. In their place were smaller brands that prioritized often-ignored issues like sustainability and diversity. In many ways, these changes made it the most diverse and socially conscious Fashion Week we've ever seen.

While these representative moments are important to celebrate, they often don't translate off the runway. Sure, we saw significantly more size diversity among models in the shows, but are the brands offering those sizes to their customers? InStyle surveyed the size ranges of every brand on this season's schedule, and the numbers tell a much less transformative story. Of the 75 shows on the official calendar, 20% offer clothing above a size 20 and about 70% of designers produce clothing at a size 12 or above. Comparing these numbers to the 2020 season, which had fewer brands due to pandemic cancellations, the stats have remained consistent.

For the most part, it appears that when brands increase their size ranges, they are doing so incrementally. Some increased their size offering by one or two sizes over the past year. Still, this is not to say that full collections are offered in complete size ranges, and often, only a few pieces go up to the largest size. It's a good change, yes. But at the end of the day, fashion brands on the calendar are not catering the majority of people. Below, see how every brand on the NYFW calendar stacks up when it comes to size ranges they actually produce.

A few things about our survey.

We only surveyed designers that could be found on the official CFDA calendar here.
We only included women's ready-to-wear brands (denim and men's, for example, were excluded).
We did not include designers that only create custom clothing or do not sell in retail (like The Blonds).
Brands that use European sizes were converted to US sizing using this chart.
For brands that size XS-XXL, we used the following conversion: XS= 0, S=2/4, M=6/8, L=10/12, XL=14/16, XXL=18/20. This was based on the average of the designers' conversion estimations.
In the instance that a designer offers extended sizing per request but does not produce it across the majority of their products, we went with the size run they create all pieces in.