Why loose is foreign

At the small museum at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, I visited an exhibition of clothes influenced by 'exoticism' this week. Looking at 1970s caftans and the 1920s tunics of the aesthetic movement, it became clear to me that the inspiration of cultures foreign to the west was often for loose, comfortable, practical clothes.

Unrestrictive Asian and African 'peasant' styles have stayed on the edges of the west's perennial modern fashion, a fetish of tightness. In the 1920s, to emulate the dress of the second and third worlds was to embrace a romantic freedom, to escape from nipped-in waists and moulded busts and bottoms.

Mariano Fortuny's 'Delphos' pleated dress recalled the robes of the ancient Greeks and Diaghilev's Ballets Russes set a fashion for loose oriental and Persian costumes. Glamorous fashion stores like Liberty sold robe-like tunics, suddenly envisioning a luxury in poverty.

Again, in the 1960s and 70s, loose kaftans and folk clothing were all the rage, making me wonder if loose sizing often reasserts itself in times of social upheaval.

The history of enthusiasm for large, loose sizes is fascinating. It's always been there, often promoted by pockets of unconventional, bohemian intellectuals, but for most of the time, in Victorian England for instance, anyone bucking the trend for small, tight sizes has been mocked and vilified.

Small sizes have for centuries been a sign of wealth in the west - as we see still today, with the richest western women usually the thinnest. And while loose, 'exotic' non western influences have occasionally swum into fashion, they are seen as somehow too forgiving, too uncontrolled, a sign of dissipation, a giving into the flesh. Loose clothing has meant loose morals since Medieval times in the west.

Today, with the globalisation of the fashion industry, you'd think we would have given up the peculiarly western notion of unforgivingly tight clothes sizes, yet if anything, western values are being rolled out across the world instead of listening to many other cultures' 'big is beautiful' wisdom.

New York sizes

So, I've been in Manhattan for a few days now on holiday and am noticing all isn't as I thought when it comes to American sizing. Over in Blighty, we're constantly led to believe that in America, everyone is some kind of supersized, McDonalds-addicted heffalump. But in New York, at least, the women are slim, groomed and gorgeous. I've only seen two branches of McDonalds in four days. And when it comes to restaurants and corner shops, it's less Ginsters sausage rolls as we have in England, and more 100 varieties of salad and wholemeal Peruvian wrap.

Doubtless all this healthiness gets reversed as soon as you head for the midwest, but from where I'm standing, New York women look a lot healthier than your average Londoner.

Let loose in Bloomingdale's yesterday, I decided to buy a swimming costume and spent two hours trying on just about everything in the swimsuit section. The 'Magic Swimsuit' came with a label promising to make you look 10lbs smaller, but frankly there ain't no swimsuit in the world that can do that. A sales assistant told me that an American 10 is a British 12 - I had thought a British 12 was an American 8 (as does Natalie Cassidy - see my earlier post). Can anyone clear this up for me?

Why it's the label, not the body, that counts

Here's a story that says a lot about the fact that it's the size on the label that matters to women as opposed to the way they look in the mirror.

The formerly cuddly EastEnders actress Natalie Cassidy has apparently dropped 2.5 stone in three months, taking her from a size 16 to an 8. But she's reportedly told gossip magazine Now that what she's really proud of is that 'I can fit into size zero jeans! I can't believe it. I have a pair of Gap jeans that are a UK size four, which is a US size zero.'

Many women will identify with Natalie's careful sizing calculations - in her case, that being a UK 4 means she's allowed into the US size zero category. Natalie's actual measurements and proportions are the same, whether she's a 4 or a zero. Yet it clearly matters to be classified a size zero, as opposed to a size 4, just as other women will work out that they're really a size 12 and not a 14 by shopping in stores with more generously-cut clothes or by telling their friends and partners they're a size smaller or a lower weight than the reality.

Women who care about clothes size are often pretty happy with the way they look when they stand in front of the mirror. The thing that actually gets them down about their bodies is not fitting the size they want to be.

Why does size matter so much to us - and was fitting the 'right' size as important to women in the past?

Control pants: coming back?

Over the 20th century, corsets and stays gave way to girdles and then eventually to the tyranny of the diet.

But it seems that body control garments are coming back into fashion. In Observer Woman, the popularity of Spanx control pants merited a six-page feature last Sunday. Writer Louise France says, having tried a pair, that they're a whole new generation of 'fat pants' which are actually 'comfy'.

Meanwhile, friends and I were recently talking about a makeover feature in a women's glossy magazine in which several women were shown how to dress to look several sizes smaller. We had all glanced at the feature with some interest but been disappointed to learn that the only reason these women looked so slim was because they were all wrapped from neck to lower thigh in hideous body control underwear.

God forbid that any woman kitted out in this way should want to take said clothes off in order to have sex. Or that they have an accident - a life could be lost while a paramedic struggled to cut through the mummy-like body wrapping.

But with sales of Spanx soaring, perhaps it's not completely unrealistic that some women would be keen enough to display a trimmer silhouette that they would be prepared to go to such extremes with their underwear.

It sure beats dieting, but who's actually wearing this stuff and is it really worth the inconvenience?

Were women smaller 30, 40, 50 years ago?

There's a lot of media fuss today about a 'new' lower than ever size: size zero, even size 00 or size -2. But some sources appear to show that a size zero today would have been called a size 8 in the 1950s: the measurements were around the same.

I'd like to hear any memories from women who remember buying clothes in the 1950s or 60s and can compare them with the sizes in today's shops. Were clothes smaller then, or now? Was a size 16 then what we call a size 12 today?

And what about older women, our mothers and grandmothers? Who doesn't have an elderly relative whose slenderness in photos from the 1930s makes us think women were much slimmer then? I asked my great aunt Phillis - still slim in her 80s - if women ate less when she was young and she said it was all thanks to the girdles and undergarments which not only controlled but reduced the bust, waist and hips. I'm interested in hearing from anyone who remembers differences in sizes in the early years of the 20th century, or who remembers how their mother or grandmother felt about dress size.

Please comment if you can!

Size 16s under attack

In this article in the Daily Mail, nutritionist Monica Grenfell attacks 17-year-old Miss England contestant Chloe Marshall for being a size 16, calling her size a 'shocking lack of self-control'. Monica writes 'It's a total fallacy that young girls are being pressured into near-starving themselves into being too thin.'

She believes Chloe is 'undeniably overweight', explaining: 'At 5ft 10in, Chloe should have a body mass index, or BMI, (indicating her levels of fat) of 20. Hers is 26.03....And if Chloe is so overweight at barely 17, one shudders to imagine just how fat she will be a few years down the line.'

It's surprising that, given the epidemic of eating disorders among young women, a nutritionist would be caught dead saying girls aren't at risk of wanting to be too thin, let alone promoting a BMI of 20 as the ideal. A BMI of 20 is on the low side of the normal, healthy range, but a BMI of 24.9 is equally normal and healthy, according to all responsible medical guidelines. Any doctor would tell Monica that there is no such thing as an exact 'one BMI fits all' weight - we all have a natural healthy weight within a reasonable range. Plus, a BMI of 26 is only slightly over the recommended range and most doctors and nutritionists would probably see it as perfectly normal and healthy: it can hardly be accurately descibed as 'so overweight'.

Any woman with an eating disorder who reads Monica's extreme size diatribe is likely to feel her insecurities triggered and it's likely that the article will have encouraged many women who are already at a healthy weight to try to diet down to a BMI of 20.

Monica goes on to talk about her experiences as a Miss England judge, saying: 'I was struck by how elegant, charming and yes, fit, the girls were. None of them was underweight.'

In 2005 I did a reportage feature on what went on backstage at the Miss England contest for Real magazine. While I didn't see any obvious anorexics, at least one size-eight girl that year was on a Slim-Fast diet and seemed very anxious about appearing half naked in front of the judges in case she looked chubby. It didn't strike me as a healthy, fit environment for young girls.

Monica claims that to be overweight is now fashionable, but what normal woman would agree with that? I don't know a single woman who wants to be overweight. There's no pressure to be a size 16 - not that that, the average UK size, is in any way outrageously plump in my book, as this article would have us believe. The consensus among women is to be a size 12 or smaller, and where does that pressure come from? It comes from articles like this one by Monica Grenfell - what a surprise. It's impossible to read her article as anything more than a size 12 and not feel guilty.

A size 16 is only two sizes bigger than a size 12 and is a much more common size, yet being a size 16 draws vitriolic attacks from the press while a size 12 is seen as OK. It's enough to make you pity any woman over a size 12 in the public eye, especially one so young as Chloe.