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Comment by empiricus | Hacker News Reader

We are still making clothes like savages, with the only improvement being the economy of scale. We should enter a store, take a instant 3d scan, then get clothes that are custom made to size, seamless knitted, of our choice materials, properties, colors.

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Bonobos has physical "Guideshops" [0] that do not carry all inventory, but should carry a majority of the fits and sizes offered by the brand. The idea is that you go in to find the right fit, then you order your preferred color online. This reduces physical inventory in stores.

Made-to-Measure is also becoming increasingly popular. While costly compared to brands like Gap and Uniqlo, often you can get well-fitted made-to-measure garments for similar prices to mid-tier brands. For example, SuitSupply [1] offers made-to-measure dress shirts, trousers, and suits for only slightly more than their off-the-rack offerings, and FITTED Underground [2] offers made-to-measure jeans that are still in the price ballpark of premium selvedge jeans. Usually, these brands also let you customize things like button colors, cuffs, collars, monograms, etc. at little-to-no extra charge.

Even some shoe brands like Beckett Simonon [3] and BLKBRD [4] operate on made-to-order models, reducing inventory, and sometimes allowing customization.

All these options still rely on traditional manufacturing, but just the fact that you can get the fit right allows people to consume less.

[0] https://bonobos.com/guideshop

[1] https://suitsupply.com/en-us/

[2] https://fittedunderground.com/

[3] https://www.beckettsimonon.com/

[4] https://www.blkbrdshoemaker.com/

You are describing many low end tailor shops. You walk in, get 3d scanned (by the 'tailor'), choose your fabrics, and the order gets sent to the printer (the nearby sweatshop). It could be same day turn around if they didn't know you would pay more to wait a week.

3D scanning is getting there, e.g. https://www.aistetic.com/ in UK which is being by a few online retailers. At least helps with fit and reduces returns burden. Getting from that to custom printed clothing is certainly and interesting idea if the economics ever work out.

The ultimate in fast fashion. The result might be a massive pile of discarded clothes that fit no one unlike now when discarded clothing is bought and sold sometimes several times over.

Plus you have to bear in mind that for many people having to make decisions about style, fit, material, colour, pattern is a burden not a pleasure. People just want a new pair of jeans to replace the ones that got damaged so next time they are in Tesco's or Sainsbury's they just grab one off the rail and throw it in the trolley.

Wouldn't a fitted shirt just turn into an unfitted shirt? Why would clothing made to fit someone somehow fit someone else much worse than the standardized unfitted clothing?

Because unfitted clothing is generally designed so that it will fit less closely. Tailored clothing generally fits more closely so that anyone buying it second hand would need to be closer to the proportions of the original owner.

There are places that do that in Hoi An, Vietnam and can allegedly retain your 3d scan for custom made clothing later without needing to visit. The fashion space is full of tech innovations like that we never see or know about unless you follow the clothing industry which is not hacker new's forte by any means, gonna bet the majority is looking for hoodies and jeans here.

I am still searching for reasonably priced T-Shirts that only have seams from the armpits to the hips (one such seam per side), and optionally at the 4 holes for edge reinforcement. Critically, this means no seams on top of shoulders by any reasonable definition of what "on top of shoulder" means.

You could knit it on a tube knitting machine capable of adjusting loop count/circumference freely.

But for a T-Shirt you have very fine knitting, so regular knitting machines can at best do newborn-sized T-Shirts.

If anyone happens to know where I could order a dozen shirts knitted to spec based on knit design rules and published-by-them loop-pitch-after-first-wash from cotton, I'd love to hear.

What is the reason for not wanting the seams on the top of the shoulders? Aesthetics? Weightlifting?

Not seamless, but:

There are a lot of brands that offer t-shirts with "raglan" sleeves where the seam runs from the collar to the bottom of the armpit, instead of along the top of the shoulder.

Or: I personally have a number of the Durable Shirt from Ten Thousand [0], which has 2 seams on the front and back of the shoulder instead of 1 directly on top. This is so you can put a barbell on your shoulders comfortably, but I also like the aesthetic. It also looks like they are currently out of stock on these, but maybe they'll have more in the future.

[0] https://www.tenthousand.cc/products/durable-shirt?variant=39...

I had to look up raglan sleeve (it refers to the pieces of fabric and where they are stitched together, not the 2-tone colors which do make it easier to see)

https://gothaesthetics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/RAGLAN...

The amazing part is that you're so close, but you're still thinking like a savage: why would you go into "a clothing store" for this? You take a 3d scan at home, and send that over to the print-on-demand store that does spin-on-demand, for pickup whenever you're out next, or delivery at a surcharge.

A civilized person sometimes leaves the home.

Which was already baked into the last sentence, yes. The point is that "going to a clothing store" makes no sense if we're scanning for print-on-demand anyway. The scanning and fabrication don't need to happen in the same place, and once we're in a future where products are made on demand, it definitely doesn't make sense to still have "a clothing store". That's just something that any print-on-demand store that also does fabrics can handle.

We should make clothing that can be reversibly fitted to many body types, can be repaired and can endure many use cycles.

Your model might be viable too though, if we use high quality yarn and knit the clothing in a way that the yarn can be respun and reused for the next piece of clothing.

Who is going to pay $500 for a t-shirt?

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