Women's clothing size chart

US women's clothing runs on two parallel sizing systems: numeric sizes (0 through 24, in even steps) and letter sizes (XS through 3X). The standard mapping is 0–2 = XS, 4–6 = S, 8–10 = M, 12–14 = L, 16–18 = XL, and 20–24 = XXL through 3X — and that mapping is convention, not law. No standards body enforces it, and brands shift it by a slot in either direction whenever it suits their fit block. A women's clothing size chart is really two charts stapled together — a number-to-letter table and a body-measurement grid — and neither one binds any manufacturer to anything.

Both charts are below, in inches and centimeters, labeled for what they are: industry convention. After them comes something rarer — published spec measurements for the same brand's t-shirt on a unisex block and a ladies' block — which show, to the half inch, what the phrase "women's sizing" does to actual fabric.

Letter sizing compresses thirteen numeric sizes into roughly seven letters. Each letter therefore has to absorb about two numeric sizes, and every brand decides for itself where the boundaries fall. This is where most US brands put them, along with the variants you will actually meet on labels.

Two rows deserve extra suspicion. The 16–18 = XL row is the least stable mapping in the table: brands whose range stops at 18 often stretch the letters upward so 18 becomes XXL, while brands that continue to 24 hold XL wider. And 20 is where the numeric range and the plus range overlap — a 20 and a 1X can serve the same bust measurement while being cut on entirely different blocks, which the plus section below explains.

Two things about the grid's structure are worth knowing. The steps are not uniform: bust advances by about an inch per size through 10, then by 1.5 to 2 inches above 12 — grading widens as sizes grow, so a one-size miss costs more at the top of the range than at the bottom. And the closest thing to an official version of this grid, ASTM D5585, is a voluntary table of body measurements for the misses figure that brands may adopt, adapt, or ignore — all three happen. A retail chart that matches the table above is following convention, not complying with anything.

Men's shirt sizing has an anchor. A dress shirt sold as 15½ × 34 names two body measurements — neck girth and sleeve length, in inches — so every brand's 15½ is tied to the same tape reading, and a brand that drifts too far gets caught immediately (the men's dress shirt chart decodes that system). Women's numeric sizes name nothing. An 8 is not eight of anything. It is an index into whichever fit block a brand happens to draft, which means there is no external reference to drift away from — and so everything drifts.

The second mechanism is lineage. American women's ready-to-wear grew up as three separate systems that still share the rack: junior sizes (odd numbers, 1–13, drafted for a straighter, shorter-waisted figure), misses sizes (even numbers, 0–24, the range on this page), and women's or plus sizes (14W and up, drafted on a different block entirely). Three ancestries, three ideas of what a body is shaped like, one confusing store.

Third, the standard died. The US commercial standard for women's sizing, CS 215-58, was voluntary from the day it was published and was formally withdrawn in 1983. Nothing replaced it. Since then every brand has re-centered its numbers on its own target customer, and the commercial incentive points one way: cut the garment larger while keeping the number small, because the number flatters. Run that incentive for four decades and you get today's spread — the full mechanism, with measured examples, is at vanity sizing.

Finally, stretch fabrics widened the tolerance. A woven garment has to be right within an inch or so; a knit with spandex can absorb two or three, so grading got looser without generating complaints. Combine no anchor, three lineages, no standard, and forgiving fabric, and disagreement between charts is not sloppiness — it is the equilibrium.

Everything above is convention. This section is measurement. Gildan publishes flat garment specifications for its Heavy Cotton tee on two blocks — the unisex G500 and the ladies' G500L Missy Fit — same brand, same 180 gsm cotton jersey, same letters on the label. ShirtMath's catalog carries both spec runs, which makes this one of the few places "women's sizing" can be pinned to actual numbers. Chest is measured pit to pit, laid flat, seam to seam an inch below the armholes (the pit-to-pit measurement); length runs from the high point of the shoulder to the hem. All values are inches, laid flat.

Read the gaps, not just the values. The ladies' M is 2.5 inches narrower across the chest and 3 inches shorter than the unisex M with the same letter, on the same brand's spec sheet. From M upward the chest gap holds at about 3 inches, and the length gap grows to 4 inches by 2XL. The shoulder seam tells the same story: 15.11 inches across on the ladies' M against 17.74 on the unisex. The G500L is not a scaled-down G500 — it is a different pattern drawn for a different torso.

This is the widest documented gap in ShirtMath's spec data. Across the eight styles with published spec runs, unisex M chests span only 20.0 to 20.5 inches; add the ladies' cut and the spread inside the single letter M becomes 3.0 inches (17.5 to 20.5), and 3.5 inches at L (19.0 to 22.5). One letter, three and a half inches. The full eight-style grid is on the t-shirt size chart, and the unisex baseline is broken down measurement by measurement on the Gildan G500 page.

The practical rule that falls out: never carry a letter across a cut boundary. A women's-M wearer buying the unisex tee in M gets 2.5 extra inches of chest and 3 of length. The unisex size that most nearly matches a G500L M chest is actually S — 18.0 against 17.5 — and it is still 2 inches longer in the body. Match numbers, not letters.

Modifiers on a numeric size change the drafting block, not just the scale — a 12P, a 12, and a 12W are three different garments that happen to share a number. ShirtMath's catalog holds no petite or tall spec runs, so there is no measured table for this section; what follows is the mechanics, which are enough to make the labels legible.

Petite re-proportions a size for a shorter frame — the retail convention is about 5 ft 4 in and under. Girths stay close to the regular size; the vertical dimensions compress: shorter body length, shorter sleeves, a higher waist placement, a slightly narrower shoulder. If regular sizes fit you around the body but sit long everywhere, petite is the correction. Sizing down instead shrinks the girths without fixing a single vertical — the usual way people end up with tight shirts that are still too long.

Tall is the mirror image: girths held, verticals extended — longer body, longer sleeves, lower waist placement. Brands cut tall far less often than they cut petite, which is why the practical advice for a long torso is to check a garment's published length before trusting its letter. Length is one of the two numbers every chart on this site leads with, for exactly that reason.

W sizes (commonly 14W–32W) are not the straight-size range continued upward — they are drafted on a separate block with different assumed proportions: a larger waist relative to bust, a deeper armhole, more room through the upper arm. A 14 and a 14W coexist in many lines and fit differently. The letter sizes 1X–3X generally map onto the W block, which is why a 1X is not an XL even when their bust ranges overlap — same neighborhood, different house. When a brand offers both, the choice is about proportions, not about the number.

Every chart on this shelf ends the same way: the convention gets you to the right neighborhood, and only measurements get you to a shirt that fits. Measure one you already own (how to measure a shirt walks through each point), then compare numbers directly — the shirt size calculator turns a chest and a length into per-style suggestions. The rest of the size charts decode the other systems, including the international conversion chart for what a 38 or a 42 means outside the US.