Is Asian sizing one or two sizes smaller?

For the clothing we see from overseas suppliers it is usually one to two letters smaller than the United States equivalent, but there is no reliable fixed offset between factories. Work from the garment's measurements in centimetres instead of the letter.

Does runs small mean the garment is meant to be fitted?

No. A fitted cut is a deliberate decision about ease. Running small means the whole range was graded from a smaller base body, so the sleeve, shoulder, armhole and back length are short too, not just the chest.

Should I just size up?

Not automatically. Grading adds length, sleeve and shoulder along with width, so sizing up to fix one tight area makes everything else too big and moves any waist seam down your body. It works best on loose garments with no fixed waist.

Fit and sizing

Asian sizing versus US and EU sizing, and why runs small is not a style choice

2 November 2026 · 5 min read

Most of the clothing we sell ships from an overseas supplier, and the sizes run one to two sizes smaller than United States and European sizing. We put that on the product pages because it is the most important honest fact in this part of the shop. It is also widely misunderstood, usually as a cut decision rather than what it actually is, which leads people to the wrong fix.

There is no such thing as an Asian size

The phrase covers dozens of national standards and a very large number of factories using their own internal blocks. Japan, China and Korea each have national sizing systems, they are not the same as one another, and a small manufacturer selling direct to resellers often follows none of them.

So Asian sizing is not a conversion you can apply. It is a warning that the letter on the label was not graded for a United States or European body, and that the letter therefore tells you nothing you can use.

Treat it the way you would treat a listing with no chart at all. The letter is a label on an unknown, and the only route through is measurements.

Where the letter comes from

A clothing range is graded. The maker starts from one base size, a set of measurements describing the body they are designing for, cuts a pattern to it, then steps that pattern up and down in fixed increments to produce the rest of the range.

Everything about the range therefore hangs off the base. Change the base body and every size in the range moves with it, while the letters printed on the labels stay exactly where they were.

The letter is an output of that process rather than a measurement of anything. It is a position in one maker's range. Two makers' mediums are related to each other only by coincidence, and the same is true of two ranges from one factory made three years apart.

How far apart they usually sit

For the clothing that reaches us from overseas suppliers, a letter commonly sits one to two letters below its United States equivalent. A listing's L can land near a US M, and sometimes near a US S.

That is an observation about a category and not a rule you can apply to a specific garment. The variation between two factories is large enough that a fixed offset will still get you the wrong parcel, and applying one feels like diligence while being closer to a coin toss.

The only method that survives this is centimetres. Get the garment's own measurements, compare them against your body measurements plus the ease the fabric needs, and ignore the letter entirely. If the measurements are not published, ask for them.

EU and UK numbers are blocks too

EU 36, 38, 40 and UK 8, 10, 12 look like measurements and are not. They are also positions in a graded range, and the base body sitting behind them has moved over the decades in ways no label records.

As a rough alignment, EU 38 is about a UK 10 and about a US 6, but brands sit a size either side of that and plenty of brands are not consistent across their own lines. A conversion table is a starting point for a search, not an answer.

Footwear is the real exception. EU shoe sizing is tied to actual foot length through the Paris point, which is why a boot can be converted with arithmetic and a dress cannot. We have written that one up separately, because the maths is genuinely useful there and genuinely misleading here.

Why runs small is not a style choice

People read runs small as a design intention, something close to fitted or slim fit. It almost never is. A fitted cut is a deliberate decision about ease, applied consistently across a range graded for a given body. Running small is the range having been graded for a different body in the first place.

The distinction matters because the two fail in different places. A slim fit garment is narrow where it was designed to be narrow and correct everywhere else. A garment graded from a smaller base body is short in the sleeve, narrow across the shoulder, high in the armhole and short in the back length, all at the same time.

Shoulder width, sleeve length and armhole height are also the three things you cannot have altered for less than the price of the garment. A chest that is tight is a size problem. A shoulder seam sitting on your upper arm is not fixable, which is why it matters most on anything tailored: a long structured coat lives or dies on the shoulder.

Why sizing up does not always fix it

Grading steps every dimension together. Going up one size adds to the chest and the hip, and it also adds to the body length, the hem, the sleeve and the shoulder. If your only problem was the shoulder, you now own a garment that fits the shoulder and is too long and too wide everywhere else.

It is worst on anything with a defined waist, because moving up a size moves the waist seam further down your body as well as making it bigger. On a dress that means the seam lands below your natural waist and the entire shape changes into a different garment.

It is least bad on loose, unstructured pieces where no seam has to land anywhere in particular, and on anything whose waist is set by a belt rather than a seam. A belted coat puts the waist wherever you tie it, which removes the dimension that usually goes wrong when you size up.

What we do about it

Every clothing page says where the item ships from and whether it runs small. Several of the supplier listings behind those garments publish no size chart at all, and we say that rather than inventing one.

We take no returns, so a wrong size is a real loss to you, and we would much rather spend twenty minutes on an email than have that happen. Ask about a specific garment and we will go and read the supplier's own measurements for it before you order.

The printed cotton pieces are the exception in the catalogue. They are printed and shipped inside the United States on a standard chart from S to 3XL, so a printed tee is the one part of the shop where the letter means roughly what you expect it to mean.

Questions people actually ask

Is Asian sizing one or two sizes smaller?: For the clothing we see from overseas suppliers it is usually one to two letters smaller than the United States equivalent, but there is no reliable fixed offset between factories. Work from the garment's measurements in centimetres instead of the letter.
Does runs small mean the garment is meant to be fitted?: No. A fitted cut is a deliberate decision about ease. Running small means the whole range was graded from a smaller base body, so the sleeve, shoulder, armhole and back length are short too, not just the chest.
Should I just size up?: Not automatically. Grading adds length, sleeve and shoulder along with width, so sizing up to fix one tight area makes everything else too big and moves any waist seam down your body. It works best on loose garments with no fixed waist.