Size Is Just A Number, How You Wear It Is A Choice

Sizes are definitive. Whether you wear a 0 or a 10, they represent you and your body, and how attractive you are. Or so the industry says….

But that’s just not true, especially with bikinis. So many girls are concerned with why ‘smalls’ don’t fit them, believing that they must have put weight on and somehow lost their beauty if their bikinis don’t read size small. If they have to upsize, they suddenly feel fat. So much rests on what size people are wearing, that we decided it was time to set the record straight and put people’s minds at ease.

Bikinis are particularly sensitive, being so small and well fitted that people come to see them as extensions of their bodies. They’re not shirts, which can be worn lose, or dresses which can be belted if necessary. They are what you are.

 Except that’s probably one of the biggest fallacies in the industry. Since we are both an XS AND an XL depending on what brand we’re wearing, sizing definitions must be more fluid than that – or something seriously weird is going on with our bodies. The truth is, it is impossible to make sizing universal. Designers use a ‘fit model’ to finalise the design for their swimwear, tweaking it according to how it looks on her body. Their sizing then evolves, meaning that a medium is medium based on how it compares to her body. It is literally impossible for size to be universal, therefore. For that to happen, there would have to be one fit model in the world- and only one. So the size of your one piece is purely based on Hannah, the girl who wore it during the final design stages. And Hannah will have a very different body to Anna, our fit model – not in a good or bad way, just different. So of course our sizes will come up different to the next designer, and to the next. Beauty is in variation, and like our bikinis, we are all different. That is something to be celebrated, not concerned with.

 And then people define things differently. Some brands will make their bikinis deliberately small, believing that the less cloth on the body, the better. But so many girls don’t feel comfortable with that, preferring to cover up a little more- which means that a bigger size is better for them. NOT that they are bigger. Other brands want to make their tops even smaller, because they want to emphasise cleavage – and people will want to buy smaller for that reason. Our samples for Monday Swimwear are made in sizes small and large, and are scaled up and down from there- most other brands just use a small for their fit model and that’s what their whole collection is based off of.

Each piece is designed to be individual, and have a different effect on a girl to every other bikini. So the sizes are decided by the overall effect the designer is going for, rather than the size of body it should be worn on.

And that’s the thing. Bikinis aren’t representative of your size, they’re representative of who you want to be and what you want to look like- a maxi skirt is technically bigger than a mini, but wearing one doesn’t mean you’re any larger. And that goes for bikinis- they’re obviously more restricted in design, so vary sizing more than anything else.

Just today, we had two compliments on one of our bikinis, worn on the same girl – about an hour apart. One said how well it fitted, the other how tight it looked. Instead of wondering whether we had put weight on during the day, she just realised how much a bikini size doesn’t mean anything. Whether we’re wearing an XS or and XL doesn’t change how we feel about ourselves- and it shouldn’t for you, either. Swimwear sizing is a preference, rather than a definition. Remember that and embrace your body, whatever the label says.