Women’s clothing sizes have always been quite the mystery to me. An article of clothing that is a particular size at one store will fit me, while that same size will be far too big at another clothing retailer. This data visualization maps it all out for us, and it makes understanding women’s clothing sizes a lot easier. 

The visualization makes it clear that it is showing the variations on a size 8 top. It displays the bust, waist and hip measurements for various companies from high end line Dolce & Gabana to lower end retailer H&M. Not only does the visualization give precise measurements, it shows the variations across a wide spectrum of brands that all have very different price points — so these changes hold true in even some of the most expensive clothing brands. The data is definitely displayed in a very creative way, zoning in on a woman’s mid section and showing the measurements as a curved line along it. I think this is the perfect way to show this data because it truly shows the huge difference between the different brands, in a way that makes more of an impact than a bar graph, for example, would. I like that the visualization shows that even within a particular company such as the GAP, there are STILL variations. This shows that a lot of companies base their sizing on the type of clientele they think they are going to have. Designer companies are expecting to have women of smaller size because their clothes are geared more toward models, whereas less expensive brands are targeted more towards actual women’s bodies so they tend to be sized a bit larger. These are statistics that are fairly commonly known; however, the data definitely gives stronger evidence for this fact.