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Woman calls out Pretty Little Thing for 'size 4' dress that barely fits her daughter

"Honestly, I couldn't believe it."
This dress is supposedly sized for adults.
This dress is supposedly sized for adults. Courtesy of Kirsty Dee
/ Source: TODAY

It's no secret that clothing sizes for women can vary wildly depending on the brand. You might be a size 10 at one store, but maybe a size 12 or 14 at another.

Inconsistent sizing is unfortunately all too common in fashion, but this woman’s story might just take the cake.

Kirsty Dee, 29, recently ordered a dress from online retailer Pretty Little Thing. The black, ribbed T-shirt dress was labeled as a U.K. size 8, or a U.S. women’s size 4.

The dress was supposedly a U.S. women's size 4.
The dress was supposedly a U.S. women's size 4. Courtesy of Kirsty Dee

When it arrived, however, the dress was much too small for her. In fact, it just about fit her preschool-aged daughter, Molly.

She tweeted a photo of 4-year-old Molly modeling the “size 4” dress.

“Honestly, I couldn’t believe it,” Dee told TODAY Style. “I was like, how can they send me a dress this small? … I said, ‘Molly, let me try this on you,’ and it actually fit. And I was just gobsmacked, and at that point I just started laughing. Like, how can something that’s a (UK) size 8 ... fit a 4-year-old girl? It’s ridiculous.”

Dee bought it for herself, but it fit her daughter perfectly!
Dee bought it for herself, but it fit her daughter perfectly!Courtesy of Kirsty Dee

Dee paid about $13 for the dress, and she said that normally, she wouldn’t make a big deal about it.

“You just think, it’s too much effort to go to the post office to send the parcel back, so the majority of the time, you usually just throw it in the bin,” she told TODAY.

But the size was so off in this case that she decided to speak out about it. She said that when retailers get sizing this wrong, they could be damaging women’s confidence.

“It’s body-shaming as well, if you think about it, because I mean, Pretty Little Thing, they’re all about body confidence, women’s bodies, be yourself, but then they’re sending people things that are too small,” she told TODAY. “I actually thought, am I not size 8 anymore? Am I putting on weight and don’t know about it? It could really knock someone’s confidence if they think they’re bigger than they are.”

After Dee tweeted about the dress, a representative from Pretty Little Thing reached out to her on Twitter.

"So sorry to see that there is an issue with the dress you bought, if you could please drop us a DM with your order number and the name of the item we can look into getting this sorted for you," a spokesperson, Alina, wrote in response to Dee's original tweet.

Ultimately, the brand offered her a refund (though not for shipping costs, Dee said), as well as a 30% discount off her next purchase.

TODAY Style has reached out to Pretty Little Thing for comment and will update this post if we hear back.

Dee may not be able to wear the dress, but it won't go to waste; her daughter has added it to her summer wardrobe!

“I’ll let her wear it in the garden for playwear,” she said.