Sizable Adventure

I live in Colombia and decided to go to Falabella, a multinational chain of department stores founded in Chile in 1889 by an Italian immigrant called Salvatore Falabella, and since then it has become the largest retailer in South America.

I started with shirts and jackets, because as a woman curvier than average, it can be tricky to find something that fits my breasts and doesn’t look like a circus tent, or that fits my waist without stretching on my upper back and restricting my arms movements. And not entirely surprising, I couldn’t find a piece that felt right.

Later on, I decided to try on some jeans since I don’t own any. I started to compare the sizes between different brands, which I found particularly exciting because I didn’t know any of the brands they had to offer, except for one. I chose to start trying on the pieces in the same brand I use on different pants, and was surprised to see that it didn’t change that much, maybe one up, and shockingly even one or two down.

I wanted a simple pair of jeans, no acid wash, no rips on the knees or anywhere else, high rise and with pockets. It was important to me that it fitted both my hips and my waist without it having a gap on my back. And I found a pair that got pretty close to my idea.

They had six pairs of the piece I chose and I tried them all on. To my surprise, five of them felt exactly the same around my waist and hips, but one was slightly shorter. The sixth pair on the other hand, felt saggy and ill-fitting on my back side. When I was wearing these particular jeans, looked and felt completely different than the other five.

In total, I tried jeans of five different brands, and I decided not to include the one I already knew. Two of them were my usual size, one was one up, one was one down and the other one was two down. So, in summary, four different sizes fit. I didn’t think this was going to be the result, because I have been shopping the same one or two sizes of pants for a while now, in stores I frequent, that is.