What's My Japanese Clothing Size?? -- An Easy Guide

hey everyone! i get a lot of questions from all of you about what size to buy japanese clothing in, usually trying to convert it from US or UK sizes. let me tell you, that's not the way to do it! the process is very easy and works with bodyline, angelic pretty, rakuten, etc-- ANY site that shows the measurements of their clothing in CM.

so let's look how to find your size!

whatever you do, do NOT convert your clothing size using any kind of online chart. for one thing, numbered sizes vary a lot. for example, medium isnt the same with every company or country, and a size 5 might be a lot bigger in japan. THE SAME GOES FOR SHOE SIZES!! i cannot stress this enough. girls in my lolita group are always asking how to find their shoe size to buy from bodyline, because japanese shoe sizes are in centimeters instead of arbitrary numbers. i made the mistake of trying to convert my shoe size to japanese using a chart and ended up getting shoes that were either too big or too small.

so in short, whatever size you are in your native country, you might not be in a japanese brand. 

as japan uses the metric system, the measurements of japanese clothing will be given in centimeters. even if they're sold in lettered sizes like S, M, L, etc. they will usually have a description of the measurements in the details of the page.

to find out how to measure yourself for clothes, click here! to measure for your shoe size, simply take a tape measure and measure the length of your regular ol' foot without any socks or shoes on. 

now, consult the measurements on the site. for example with bodyline, they will have the measurements for each letter size in a little sidebar above where you add the item to your cart. make sure to double check everything before you buy it, and always buy a few CM bigger-- you don't want buy something that has your EXACT measurements because that would make it skintight (unless that's what you need). if there's elastic measured flat instead of stretched, then buying something that matches your measurements should be okay.

with shoes, you just want to buy a size that matches your foot measurement. always round up! you might find sometimes you'd want to buy something a half centimeter bigger in case of socks/tights/etc.

and that's it! it's really easy, and i only went into so much detail to make sure i covered everything. if there's still anything you have questions about, feel free to ask me and i'll get back to you as soon as i can! i hope this helps.