Abercrombie Curve Love vs. Madewell Curvy Jeans: Which Actually Fixes the Waist Gap?
⏱ Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Both brands sell a curvy jean. Both promise the same outcome. Neither describes it in a way you can compare against the other, and that is not an accident of marketing copy. They are measuring two different things.
One tells you how much bigger the jean is. The other tells you who the jean is for. Until you convert between those, you cannot know which one covers you.
Find Your Number First
The whole decision runs on one figure: your hip measurement minus your natural waist measurement. That difference, in inches, is what the denim industry designs around and what every curvy line is responding to.
Measure the natural waist at the narrowest point, usually just above the navel, and the hip at the fullest point, usually seven to nine inches below that. Keep the tape level front to back, which is the step people skip and the one that throws the hip number off most. Subtract the smaller from the larger. That is your differential.
What Each Brand Actually Publishes
Abercrombie publishes a garment number. Curve Love adds two inches through the hip and thigh while keeping the same waistband as the regular fit at the same numeric size. A 27 in Curve Love and a 27 in the regular cut share a waistband; the Curve Love version gives you two more inches below it.
Madewell publishes a body number. Their curvy fit is described as being for people with over a ten inch waist-to-hip ratio. That tells you the threshold at which they think you should switch, but it does not say how much room they added.
Those are opposite halves of the same equation. Abercrombie tells you the size of the adjustment and leaves you to work out who it suits. Madewell tells you who it suits and leaves out the size of the adjustment. You can convert the first into the second. You cannot convert the second into the first, because the number simply is not published.
Madewell's regular size chart runs a consistent ten inch gap between waist and hip at every size from 23 through 33. Not approximately ten. Exactly ten, all the way up the range. That fixed target is the baseline both curvy lines are departing from, and it is why a ten inch differential is the pivot point in this whole category.
Putting Both Specs on One Scale
With the baseline fixed at ten inches, Abercrombie's two extra inches of hip room put Curve Love in the region of a twelve inch differential. Madewell's curvy line begins just above ten and has no stated upper end.
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Abercrombie's two inches and Madewell's ten inch threshold both come from the brands. The twelve inch figure for Curve Love does not. It is arithmetic on top of the industry baseline, and Abercrombie has never confirmed what differential their regular fit is cut to. Treat it as a well-founded estimate rather than a specification, and treat any guide that states it as fact with suspicion.
Which One Covers You
At 10 to 11 inches, you are at or barely past the standard design target. Madewell's curvy line technically applies above ten, but you are close enough to regular that a standard fit in either brand may work without alteration. Curve Love's two extra inches will probably read as loose in the seat.
At 12 to 13 inches, this is the band Curve Love appears built for, and it is also the band where a gap reliably shows up in standard denim. Madewell's curvy line claims you too, but without a published figure you are trusting a threshold rather than a measurement.
At 14 inches and above, neither brand states that it covers you. Curve Love's derived twelve falls short. Madewell's open-ended range does not exclude you, which is not the same as including you. This is where the structural reason standard sizing fails hourglass proportions stops being about brand choice and starts being about alteration.
Where Both of Them Run Out
A differential is one number describing two different bodies. Two people at thirteen inches can need opposite garments, because the difference can come from a full seat and thigh or from wide hip bones with a flat seat behind them.
Curve Love adds its two inches through the hip and thigh together. That suits the first body and overshoots the second, which gets a baggy seat and collapsed thigh while the waist finally sits flat. No published spec distinguishes these cases, and no size chart will.
The axis here is published specification against your measured differential, not fit quality or how either pair looks. On that axis neither brand wins outright. Abercrombie gives you a number you can check your body against, which makes Curve Love verifiable and bounded at roughly twelve inches. Madewell gives you a threshold with no ceiling, which makes their curvy line unverifiable but potentially broader. Transparency and coverage are not the same virtue, and each brand has picked one. If price rather than fit is the question you are really asking, how Madewell denim compares on what you pay for it is a separate calculation.
Measure your hip minus your waist before you open either site. Under 11 inches, buy regular in either brand. Around 12, Curve Love is the one with a number behind it. Above 14, expect to alter whatever you buy, and choose on the rest of the fit instead. If you order both, order the same numeric size and return the loser.
Frequently Asked Questions
Two inches more room through the hip and thigh, with the same waistband at the same numeric size. A 27 in each shares a waist measurement, and the Curve Love version is two inches larger below it. You do not size differently between the two fits.
Madewell sets its threshold at over ten inches. Standard denim across the industry is designed around ten, so anything meaningfully above that is where a curvy cut starts earning its place. A gap becomes reliable rather than occasional from about twelve inches.
There is no published figure that would let you answer this. Abercrombie states two inches; Madewell states a body threshold instead of a garment adjustment. Anyone claiming a direct comparison is inferring it from fit reviews rather than reading it off a spec.
Sizing down shrinks the waist and the hip together, so it reintroduces the tightness you were trying to escape while only partly closing the gap. Curvy cuts exist precisely so you do not have to make that trade. If the waist is still loose in the correct hip size, that is an alteration, not a size change.
Because a curvy block adds seat and thigh room along with hip room. If your differential comes from wide hip bones rather than a full seat, you get the extra fabric in places you did not need it. The waist finally sits flat while the seat sags, which reads as a worse fit overall.
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