It is no surprise to learn that, despite the patina of evidence-based measurement implied by the concept of ‘standard sizes’, clothing sizes are a problematic cultural construct. What is surprising is the arbitrary extent to which these ‘categories of failure’ have evolved. To illuminate this history Campbell talks to industry professionals and academics, explores historical collections, visits vintage fairs, and relays the hilarious testimony of survivors of wardrobe malfunctions. Beneath the quasi-sciences of physiognomy and somatotyping and the anthropometric data of national sizing surveys, she finds an ideology that she calls ‘orthovestia’ (from the Greek ortho-, meaning ‘proper’, and the Latin vestir, meaning ‘dress’). Orthovestia circulates ubiquitously, from the corrective advice of reality television to bra sizing. ‘What makes orthovestia so socially corrosive,’ Campbell writes, ‘is that it piggybacks on our trust in science to persuade us that some body shapes are good and others bad.’

But Out of Shape is not a rant about feeling bad. The research is fastidious, the analysis cogent, the tone incisive and witty. When Campbell shares her own ambivalent feelings – allure, comfort, shame – the relationship between these bigger industrial and cultural histories and our own love–hate relationships with clothes becomes strikingly and satisfyingly clear.