Last Tuesday I found myself sitting at my desk in our Chicago office with three separate article deadlines looming when my editor texted me. “Can you take that sustainable style panel on Thursday night? Business casual-ish.”
Business casual-ish. Great. Because what exactly does that mean? Could literally be anything from “jeans with no holes in them” to “casual enough to work at those Instagram-y startups but also tasteful enough that you don’t look underdressed wearing said jeans at a trendy art opening.” I scan down at my current outfit, sweatpants adorned with what I can only assume is a crusty coffee stain from Monday morning and an old college tour shirt for Vampire Weekend, and panic.
Thankfully I have 47 minutes to kill during my lunch hour, which leads me racing through the doors of H&M before sprinting back to the office to make my next client call. I mean, it’s gotta be somewhere in there, right? Pants that aren’t sweatpants?
H&M is the Sweden’s gift to retail hell. Their sizes run so inconsistently small because who knows why (there’s literally no adult humans in their fitting rooms?) that I always end up screaming silently in their fitting rooms.
I grab handful of options, theoretically in my size, and plunk myself down in front of their overbright mirrors and stalls that separate you from complete strangers like a flimsy sheet of mildew-colored plastic.
And this, my friends, is where I remember yet again how clothing at H&M is apparently only meant to fit glorified hamsters.
The first pair of chinos refuse to button past my thighs. Literally do not button. Pair number two zips up, but not without creating a muffin top-type bulge between my pants and shirt that makes me think of those old Pillsbury commercials. Where are those, mam?’ Third pair buttons, but not without assuming I have trees for legs.
Forty-five minutes later, sweatpants still intact, I manage to leave with one solitary shirt that actually fits, despite being a plain black t-shirt I could’ve found at Target for cheaper and less despair.
I am by no means alone in this suffering. My friend Mike is 6-foot-4 with the “skinny NBA player” build (read: actual shoulders), yet still finds shopping at H&M “like shopping in a funhouse where Mr. Funhouse hates people with shoulders.” My girlfriend picked up a dress from there last month that was “her size” and couldn’t get it past her shoulders. And not because she’s big (she’s tiny), but H&M apparently doesn’t make clothing for people with shoulders.
I’ve shopped there so long knowing their disappointing truth about their “sizes” I’ve started compiling a helpful guide of what actually works on an actual human with width, depth, and height. Here’s what I’ve learned, dear H&M shoppers.
Disclosure: Vanity sizing does not exist at H&M. If anything, their clothing runs small-ish compared to the vanity madness we’ve been blessed with running at larger American retailers (continue giving thanks). As American brands have gotten progressively bigger with their sizing over the years while marking their tags with smaller numbers, H&M kindly said no thank you to that practice. They proudly display European sizing on everything which runs smaller than our U.S. standards. If you’re usually a medium at most places, you’re looking at a large or even an XL at H&M. If you’re an XL… Well, I hope you work up the confidence to check out their plus line because otherwise you’ll likely leave crying.
Don’t believe me? Spend two years like I did fighting the undeniable facts that you are not a medium at H&M and watch yourself sob into a rack of size LARGE shirts that you swear just a month ago were marked medium. It’s a special kind of self-loathing realizing that you literally can not fit your arms into your shirt’s armholes in your “normal” size. Trust me and size up. Always size up.
Don’t even get me started on how their cuts change from season to season, both within the same clothing line and across separates meant to match. I bought a GREAT shirt from there last spring and went toreplace it two weeks ago. Same style! Same slogan! But dang near two inches smaller through the shoulders…and about 70% less stretchy. It’s retail insanity.
I asked a publicist for H&M what the deal was with the inconsistent sizing one day while researching a story and she told me they “periodically update fits based on current trends.” Corporate speak for: “We decide someone’s torso needs to be two inches narrower two months from now and then we change all our clothes without telling you!”
The only acceptable options for men with an ounce of muscle tone (or biceps that aren’t nonexistent from spending all day in front of a computer) are their regular fit shirts in sizes up. And don’t forget to look for stretch fabrics. Every shirt they makes slim fits for humans who don’t eat food. And their “muscle fit” is basically medical-grade compression shirts pretending to be casual tees.
The one thing that somewhat fits on an actual man are their blazers. Especially their unstructured versions from their premium lines. They tend to run a little loose through the chest and shoulders, though the sleeves are often shorter than ideal. If you’re lucky enough to have long arms plan on rolling them up or paying for alterations.
Where H&M truly hates men is in the pants department. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried on a slim fit pair and thought to myself “there is no way a grown ass man with thighs put there by GOD HIMSELF could fit into these.”
Skinny fits might as well be designed for after you’ve had yours removed. Go with their straight or relaxed fits. They actually seem to understand humans have muscle groups called quadriceps and calves.
I hear it’s only worse for women. My friend Sarah wears an 8 across the board at stores like Gap, J.Crew, and Everlane but owns a veritable smorgasbord of sizes at H&M in her closet. Size 8. Size 10. Size 14. Here’s her exact text to me when she realized she owned three of the same shirt in three different sizes that all fit her the same:
“That’s wild to me because their size 12 fits the exact same as my Levi’s 8s. HOW.”
The sizing deprecation doesn’t stop at separates; it’s across their whole closet. Dresses are either sack dresses that look haute on all body types or stiff and tailored things that only look good on, like, 2% of the population. Basic tops and tees run smallish through the shoulders and boobs (tip: avoid the boob-area at all costs and you’ll be fine. Their basics were clearly designed by someone who plays basketball with their feet).
Even worse is how their sizing varies from shirt to shirt, even when they’re literally the exact same garment! I’ve stood in front of the rack holding up two of the same shirt in the same size marveling at how one fits me easily and the other mocks me from the try-on rack next to it.
This is unfortunately true of most fast fashion—which needs to keep costs low for their clothes to be cheap, so they design everything digitally and manufacture it in small batches so sizing will always vary from shirt to shirt—but H&M feels particularly bad about it. It’s like they pride themselves on how useless their size labels are.
My friend Ashley showed me her H&M closet years ago and couldn’t recall a single item that was the same size. “XS, S, M, XL. Doesn’t matter.” She told me. “It’s more of a suggestion.”
And let me tell you, shopping online there is a futile exercise. Once you find that perfect shirt in-store there is literally no guarantee you’ll have the same experience buying it online. I don’t order clothes from H&M that I haven’t tried on because who knows what dimension I’ll be shipped to when that order arrives.
A fit model once explained to me at a conference why H&M (and most fast fashion) seems to have no idea what “average” clothing should even look like. They design their clothes on computers then bring those designs to life on, maybe, two fit models total. “Fit models,” she said. “That’s everyone who works here that’s a sample size 2 or 4.”
That means they’re designing to flatter the body they want you to have, not the body you already do.
Sure, there are gems at H&M. Ones that actually fit. If you know where to look. Knitwear almost always fits better than their woven goods. Stretchy fabric is always your friend. And baggy clothes, if you can find them amidst their sea of oversized skinny everything, will fit you and your body far better than trying to squeeze into their “standard” fits.
Now I tend to grab every version of a shirt I like in every size and just try them all on. Arming myself with at least three of the same shirt (because you never know which size will be “right”) has become my foolproof method of shopping at a store that was obviously designed by aliens who’ve never seen an actual human skeleton chart.
I eventually found an outfit that would work for the panel (thanks, black jeans that I needed to size up twice to actually fit button!) but not after nearly an hour of faffing around and having a mini existential crisis in front of the mirror that day.
As I was checking out, my shirt tucked into those questionable jeans and trying not to hyperventilate from the panic of potentially not knowing what I was wearing at a professional (yet “business casual-ish”) event later that night, the cashier glanced over at my pile of clothing and deadpanned, “You tried the sizes on, right? Most people have to go up at least one.”
I assured her I had (multiple times) and she just shrugged and smiled. “Good. I work here and I still sometimes get it wrong.”
Girl knows her retail.
