'Time' Magazine Quotes Boorady on Clothing Size Expertise

Many shoppers are puzzled by the fluidity of clothing sizes, how they vary among designers and retail outlets. But who know that teen girls used to buy clothing based on their age? Or that a size 6 today would have been marked a 12 in the 1960s?

Lynn Boorady, associate professor and chair of the Fashion and Textile Technology Department who has studied clothing sizing for more than 20 years, explained how sizes have shifted over the decades in an article that appeared in Time magazine online October 23.

"True sizing standards didn’t develop until the 1940’s,” Boorady told Time. “Before then sizes for young ladies and children were all based on age—so a size 16 would be for a 16-year-old—and for women it was about bust measurement.”