As any woman will tell you, working out what dress size you are isn't as easy as finding the perfect fit in one shop - as someone who fits into a size 14 pair of trousers in one high street shop might struggle to do up the button on a size 16 in another.
But out of all the things we hit up the high street for, finding the perfect pair of jeans always seems to be the most challenging, especially if you like to shop around for your flattering denim pieces.
In fact, research suggests almost half of women have trouble shopping for jeans - which is why The Sun sent fashion writer Abby McHale to six different high street shops to directly compare the sizing of their denim.
Abby - who is the Senior Stylist for Fabulous - bought a size 14 pair of jeans from River Island, Next, New Look, George at Asda, Zara, and M&S to see just how different the sizing actually is.
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River Island
The writer claimed River Island's £42 denim was a "great fit" for her and was one of her favourite pairs, after she measured the waistband in at 34 1/2 inches.
However, Abby was left confused when she checked the size guide on the River Island website for clarification when she got home from her shopping trip, as the website stated the size 14 should only carry a 30 1/2 inch waist.
That low waist figure is also much lower than the figures from other high street shops, and if the jeans she bought had actually been that size, they would have been around 1 1/2 inches smaller than other size 14s.
Next
Abby found the jeans from Next too big, as a size 14 measures in at 34 inches in the waist.
She also noted that while Next - who sell their jeans for £24 - is great at offering various options for petite, regular, and tall varieties of jeans, they have no clear waistband indication on their website - meaning you'll have to break out the tape measure if you actually want to check the waist size of your denim.
After swapping out the oversized 14s for a size 12, which had a 32 inch waist, Abby found the jeans fit "just right".
New Look
New Look price their jeans at £29.99 and the size 14s carry a 33 1/2 inch waist.
Abby said that she actually owns a pair of these jeans in her everyday wardrobe already, but noted that trying on a new pair saw her struggle to get the buttons done up at first - although she did manage to squeeze into them.
She also said that once she'd been wearing them for a while, the stiffness in the waist began to loosen and they became much more comfortable to wear.
Much like Next though, New Look's size guide online focuses on leg length rather than waistband size.
George at Asda
Abby claimed she was unable to find a size guide at all when shopping online on Asda's website for its George clothing line, and the only size indication was the picture caption, which read: “Our model is 5ft 6in and wearing a size 8."
When she picked up the size 14 jeans though, the writer found they "went on with ease and fastened nicely" - and didn't feel too loose, even though they carried a 34 1/2 inch waist.
Zara
The style expert struggled with the £45.99 jeans from Zara, as even with their claims of a 34-inch waist, the size 14s Abby tried on needed a "proper yank" to pull up and fasten.
Zara's offering were "one of the most flattering" pairs Abby tried on, but she decided to size up to a 16 because she needed "a bit more give" for them to be truly comfortable.
Unfortunately, the size 16s were "way too big".
M&S
Marks & Spencer's jeans were priced at £39.50 and were labelled as being 31 3/4 inches in the waist.
According to Abby, the jeans she tried on "slipped on easily and were super-comfortable", to the point where she actually considered them to be too big for her, and she swapped them out for a size 12.
The writer noted that the style is described as coming up "baggy" so she expected a looser fit overall.
Verdict
During the course of her research, Abby discovered that sizing on jeans seems to be "just a number" when it comes to our favourite high street shops, as the size 14s she tried on varied from 31 3/4 inches all the way up to 34 1/2 inches in the waist - but it was the pair labelled the smallest that actually came up the biggest in practice.
Speaking to Lauren Bell, a senior designer at fashion brand supplier Renfold, Abby also found out that high street shops don't "standardise their denim" in the same way they do with other items of clothing.
Lauren said: “This is because the current culture of fast fashion doesn’t allow time to execute everything perfectly.”
There are also discrepancies when it comes to sizing because of the stretchiness of some pairs of jeans that contain elastane compared to those that don't.
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