Sizing chaos
pudding.cool
pudding.cool
Finding a tailor that understands you / you agree with is an option too, if time is a hard limit (though I'm not sure it's altogrther that much quicker).
In my case, I started with tailors, but kept running into small misunderstandings. Also, my taste keeps evolving.
Start small with simple stuff, ideally old / second hand cheap clothes. Shirts, T-Shirts and bodice waistlines / "darts" are almost trivial once you can follow a straight line. First one will take a while, second will be much quicker, by third / fourth it's almost a routine and you can start iterating on your own preferences. They likely "will" evolve as you keep wearing the altered clothes.
Depending on how much help you can get in the beginning, with maybe a 2-3h intro on how to use a sewing machine done by a friend who has sewing as a hobby, I'm pretty sure most people should be able to get their first alterations done within 4-5h. By second or third attempt, this time should be down to around 1h per item, including some setup (pinning - trying - ironing). At that point the DIY option is probably quicker than going to a tailor.
Did you know that most professional sewing charts are just DXF files?
And did you know that DXF is the most common file format for laser cutters?
;)
=> just let the machine cut out precisely the clothing shapes that you need
After a few tries, I also started to add small sideways cuts to the outlines as alignment markers. And then you just need to connect the pieces where you marked them while always leaving roughly 0.5 cm of gap to the laser cut line. I went with 0.5 because my sewing machine has a hardware alignment guide with that offset. And at that point, it takes a skilled tailor only mere minutes to finish a shirt, which means in exchange for their 1x hourly rate they will be willing to finish off 5x proto t-shirts for you.
There's plenty of hacking that can be done on the subject of sewing and I admit that laser cutter is a cool one.
I'm still pretty partial to that sewing machine route (or needle and thread, if handiwork is prefferable). Simply because it lets you quickly iterate and build the taste, preferences and heuristic of how to get there. Personally, I still can't read a pattern propetly. But I'm more than happy to put a few pins into a shirt and prototype in front of a mirror.
Also, it gives me a good estimate of what I'm OK doing myself and what I will outsource to an actual tailor because it's either beyond my level, or I simply don't have time to do it.
For some basic jerseys (think T-shirts) a basic zigzag is fine to begin with. That 100EUR sewing machine will have some fancier stretch stitch options that are slow, but "good enough" to look like an overlock (but can't do the cut of course).
If you have the space / money, overlock is definitely what I'd get as a second / third machine. It's much quicker / cleaner if you're working on jerseys or shirts.
But I still keep wearing the T-shirts I did when I was starting. On my list the first thing to do is to understand how to alter something to fit you. It can be done by hand (needle and thread), but to be reasonably efficient, the BOM would be "sewing machine, box of pins, scissors, piece of chalk / ruler and something to press / iron".
I do wish it attempted to answer the question at the end, though: "Sizes are all made up anyway — why can’t we make them better?"
Like, why doesn't the market solve for this? If the median woman can't buy clothing that fits in many brands, surely that's a huge marketing opportunity for any of the thousands of other clothing brands?
This is, to be clear, a sincere question - not a veiled argument against OP or anything! It seems like there are probably some structural or psychological or market forces stopping that from happening and I'd love to understand them. Same with the "womens clothes have no pockets" thing!
Because
- in reality it's not much of a problem. Billions of women manage to buy and wear clothes just fine. Some might fit slightly better or worse, but unless you have very special body shape (and even extreme thick/overweight/tall/short are covered by niche brands) you can get in any clothes store and get plenty of clothes to wear
- some random brand making something that fits better doesn't mean any sizeable consumer percentage is going to buy it. First because see above, and also because a lot of clothes purchases are about brand and fashion and status signalling, not mere fit.
- if some women absolutely can't find something in their size from a specific brand, that makes the brand even more exclusive, like it being "for fit people only". Obviously brands for thicker and even obese people also exist, but they're seen as a brand of need, not a brand you'd be proud having to wear
The elephants in the room from the raw data is it is very clear some brands do not want average middle aged women wearing their products. Anthropology seems to be the most clear about this in that they have a literal gap between their standard and plus-sized ranges that excludes the adult median woman.
Now some brands might do that out of snobishness, but I expect there is a feedback loop here:
1) Young, attractive women want to make fashion choices that signal they are young, attractive women.
2) They buy from fashion lines that don't fit average adult women.
3) Average adult women detect that the fashionable choice is these brands and feel left out, because a fair number of them would also like to be young and attractive again. And a small but significant fraction feel really left out if some clothing brand calls them a size 20 waist / fat / shaped like a rectangle. Clothing brands detect this in their customer studies and respond appropriately.
4) People who just want clothes buy from H&M or wherever and don't write articles about how hard it is to fit clothes.
"Women" isn't really a homogeneous category when it comes to clothing, there is ongoing fierce competition between lots of different sub-groups of the female population to signal lots of different things. Men have it a bit easier because there is basically a 4-quadrant choice between upper & lower class, formal & casual with a lot of intricacy for people who care a lot about what brand of black leather shoe they own. Young girls are closer to men in that they aren't really trying to signal anything at that age, so clothing fits are a lot easier to manage.
Online shoppers seem to solve this issue by just buying multiple items and returning the ones that don't fit. After which the retailer throws these returns in the bin.
This is how many brands originally blow up and grow famous. Especially in Asia.
You make clothing in sizes only extremely slim people can wear.
This is an extremely popular brand that specifically does this, and it's hardly the only one:
"Getting into the clothes" is a low bar. I can get into this brown paper bag. Comfort is underrated.
> if some women absolutely can't find something in their size from a specific brand, that makes the brand even more exclusive, like it being "for fit people only".
Heh I think mens sizing signals the opposite: too skinny = insufficiently masculine.
What special snowflake part of the world do you live in that any woman can walk into any clothes shop and find clothes that fit? Because I call bullshit on that.
No. Billions of women don't have any other choice. Take your wife (or even better, mom) shopping for clothes. You'll learn a lot about "manage just fine". Often its a multi-hour slog through all stores trying to find just one item that doesn't look like shit, and fits somewhat well.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time the most profitable marketing strategy is unrelated to aligning with what's optimal for the consumer.
Appearance self-esteem takes a hit when they don't fit in a size. They take it out on the clothes: "I hate their stuff, they suck." They buy more of other stuff to compensate for the hit, whether non-sized accessories (I am pretty) or book/tech (I am smart even if I don't fit).
People confident in their appearance are immune to the effect, and simply think it's sized wrong or runs small.
Women don’t buy their real size because it makes them feel bad -> market pressures companies to address that by doing vanity sizing -> brands bad
I cannot comprehend that jump in the logic.
Gifts for Women
Again, you should avoid buying clothes, but not because women don't like clothes. The problem is sizes. First of all, women's clothing sizes don't mean anything. Suppose you're looking at a dress, and the tag says it's a size 14. You could measure that dress with every known measuring instrument, checking for every known unit of measurement, and you would never find any dimension that was 14 anythings long. Not only that, but you would never find any dimension that corresponded to the same dimension on any other size-14 dress. Not only that, but chances are you would never find any woman in the entire world who would admit to being a size 14.
Even guys can't really get away with just "Small, Medium, Large" if they want a decent fit that they can predict from just the label. Modifiers for the cut become necessary (regular, slim, relaxed, extra-slim, that kind of thing). And that's for clothes that are pretty forgiving on the fit, like knits...
Women's clothes are even trickier. It's basically impossible to boil them down to one or even two size metrics or labels unless you're relying on a shitload of stretch in every other part of the garment, which is something that usually only very bad garments do (think: Temu). Women's proportions are also far more variable. Shoulder-bust-waist-hip often sees some pretty wild differences, like two women will match on a couple of those measurements and be way far apart on the others. Then you've got height to worry about. Dudes can be similarly far outside the norm of distributions for the relations between their key measurements, but it's not as common—most of us have it relatively easy.
Looking at the actual measurements, though, I've found to be very reliable. I buy almost all my clothes on eBay and directly from brands on their websites, with great success, because I know both my own key measurements, and the dimensions of clothes that fit me well (I have some notes, doesn't take a lot of data points to have enough to be pretty accurate). I've also ordered for my wife with a similar strategy, works well there, though you're way more likely to run into cases of "OK there are zero sizes of this garment that will work for you, just gotta give up on this one" because of the issue above.
On the other hand, I have never found trousers in a standard size that I would find comfortable. I have always worn only either completely bespoke trousers or standard trousers that have been customized for me by a tailor.
Unfortunately, where I live tailors have disappeared. For now this has not been a problem, because I still have many bespoke trousers made a long time ago. I wonder what I will do when I will need new trousers.
This is not an absolute size related problem. Many years ago, I have been obese for some years. Then I have learned to control my weight (after many failures), and for the last 2 decades I have been a relatively slim male of average height.
Despite this, I was content with standard sizes neither when I was obese, nor now when I am slim.
I am wondering why a lot of professions that existed when I was a child have become non-profitable, because the existence of cheaper alternatives today still does not seem a sufficient explanation. I have grown in Eastern Europe and absolutely everybody (except those belonging to the hierarchy of the ruling party) would have been considered extremely poor by today's standards. Despite this, most people could afford bespoke clothes of very high quality compared to what is available today and the tailors who made them had decent revenues.
Oh that explains why my wife spends so much time obsessing over clothes: trying clothes, buying/returning, buying others, etc. I'm sure a few others can relate.
And she's got a very normal BMI: not underweight, just plain in the middle (5'5" / 124 lbs: something like that) and a very hour-glassy/feminine shape, so many clothes are "made" to her shape/size/weight. I can't imagine what it'd be if she had uncommon "dimensions".
I will settle for making them consistent. Multiple times, I have ordered the same clothing in the same size from the same webpage in different colors, and some colors fit, and the others do not.
I am surprised that a women's clothing startup prioritizing pockets big enough for smartphones hasn't usurped the incumbents. I would have figured the convenience of being able to store a device that people have their heads down in 95% of the time would be sufficient to supersede more vanity related motivations.
First didn’t fit because it was too tight, so I tried one size larger. This one was even smaller than the previous one. So I tried an even bigger one which was only taller. Tried a bigger number now it was way too big. So for fun I tried one with a higher number which turned out to be smaller than the previous one.
When I asked the store assistant, they shrugged and said that was just reality and why you need to try every item individually. It has to do with how much “spare” cloth the seamstress takes when stitching the trousers together, if the original piece of cloth was even already cut to size properly.
These days I buy from the brand own size, the same item and it fits every time.
The pockets thing is similar, not having pockets is annoying but its not that big of a deal. I rather buy something cute without pockets than search for something with some. If it has them great, if it doesnt oh well I will just use my purse. Barely anything fits in pockets anyways and I have a feeling other women feel similarly which is why many of us buy things whether or not they have pockets.
This happened to me several times from the 1990s through the aughts. Literally between one shopping session and the next, the same style of clothes (tops, bottoms) which had fit perfectly no longer did, resulting both in a set of returns (of clothing) and non-returns (of myself, for future purchases) to those stores. As someone who generally dislikes the shopping experience, additional and insurmountable frictions such as these are absolutely fatal.
More recently (as I've just commented) it's the widespread adoption of stretch fabrics in non-athletic wear. I may want stretch in some of my workout clothes. I don't want it in my street clothing.
Because “my style” prefers one over the other, I know when I buy from a certain brand so it’s going to fit on me better.
If if waistlines were standardized it wouldn’t really account for all the other measurements.
Figure out the variables (like shape, inseam, width, whatever else) for each article of clothing. Then freely distribute this and begin to catalog popular items. You can crowdsource some of this. The idea is people will look up the clothes as per your scale.
Then after you index a lot of clothes, you can search by exact measurements and then you can hit up clothing manufacturers to use their propriety code in their marketing or promote their brands on your site.
I believe that’s how most of us try clothes out. It’s not only a matter of body shape, but also skin color, hair color, facial hair, face shape, hair cut…
You always need to try out the clothes before buying…
To the commenter below:
Exactly. The societies where aspirations have been dampened or completely suppressed have been collectivistic and/or totalitaristic - USSR, North Korea, etc. - ie. where individual will is totally suppressed.
That said, if we could just get the critical measure online that'd be fantastic. No need for sizes, I know how big inches and centimeters are.
And, as it turns out, my favorite retailers do in fact include measurements, but I'd rather have a few quality items than lots of garbage, which is also why I own a sewing machine because sometimes I really love a dress but the manufacturer doesn't accommodate my specific frame. I developed this practice when I was broke and shopping out of thrift stores. It allowed me to buy almost anything and tailor it to make it fit. Really broadens your fashion horizons.
With regard to why sizing is difficult, I'd guess it's just consumer laziness or cognitive dissonance. Although it's maybe a little bit of efficiency too. How many models should I produce (and how many lines do I have to run) to fit every woman just right instead of lying to all of them? For pants alone, if you really want it to actually fit, you're going to need ankle, calf, knee, thigh, inseam/outseam, glute, hip, and waist (and crotch to waistband if you're offering different rises). So if you've got even just 5 measurements (probably not enough as no way do all women fit tailored within 5 different calf sizes), you've got 5^9 different products (and therefore machine configurations) to cover just that space, because yes there are women with massive calfs and small thighs or same waist/hip or whatever combination you can imagine) and that's all just for literally one style. If you've got five different pants that's immediately 5^9.
Lots of (american) women are perfectly fine with their 36in underbust but would be shamed to admit they need a 46in hip with their 32in waist for all that ass. Much better to just lie and say I need an 8 which will not in any world ever make it over my butt.
Maybe we can compromise on a 'call it' measurement which is on average 2 less than the prevailing standard would suggest. If your countries' system would have you in a 8, you can 'call it a 6', and then we're all happy.
> Like, why doesn't the market solve for this?
We were able to give details about fit comfort across many measurements for each size, but this feature was basically unused. 99% of users used the statistical average body of themselves instead of themselves, which actually exacerbates the body type problem.
Another interesting thing about the industry and the grading process we learned; many retailers had no measurements for their own clothes except the reference size. This was much more common of higher end brands.
1 last thing; some global brands actually have the same size name on the same product represent a different size in different region (eg an SKU in size S in US may have different measurements to the same SKU in S in Asia)
I (Swiss) once ordered a T-shirt from a U.S. brand, size M because that fits me perfectly 95% of the time. It was way too big for me.
Lesson learned, the next time I liked a T-shirt form the same brand, I ordered the size S. It was way too tight, I couldn't even put it on. I checked the label, and it said: "European fit".
In order to get fast fashion made cheaply and quickly, corners are (left) uncut.
When you say reference size, do you mean like a single size which is used in the industry for samples? I had a friend living in Montreal who was fashionable, she said it was like heaven being a size 8 in Montreal because she had access to a bunch of cheap, interesting, one-off samples. Wondering if this is the same concept.
Never been in the industry, but used to follow a blog of someone who did pattern design for a north-american casual-wear company, super interesting stuff! There's lots of nuance in size grading.
The real concern I have is how the large majority of westerners are overweight or obese. That's a serious issue way beyond the practicality of buying clothes
I'm a man often shopping for bike wear in Europe. I'm neither overweight or obese. The article is right that sizing is a complete mess: with my 180cm and 74kg I'm usually mass market size M in tops and L in pants because I just have a big ass (again I'm not fat, I still have a big ass when I'm 70kg during the height of the summer season). But it's often an S in tops. Anyway, in the bike brands sizing, the tops are mostly M to L.
The bike pants? I have already sent back XXL's because I just couldn't put them on. But for some brands, I'm still L, for others it's XL. The measurements don't mean anything, they are completely off quite often. The only half-usable help is customer reviews where people note their measurements and the size that fit them. Also the sizing is not only inconsistent between brands, but also for different items of the same brand.
One thing I don't really understand is the brands perspective. If someone with my measurements is forced to wear XL (and for long pants the legs are often too long as a result), what is left? Will a guy 185 cm high weighting 90kg, which is not uncommon, be forced to wear an XXXL (if they make this size, which they usually don't)? Do they look at this and think it's good sizing nomenclature?
So I have almost the opposite problem from you, where an M is usually reasonable for me on the bottom, but _comically_ tight on top. Even an L is usually way too tight through the chest and biceps for me, but now not long enough in the arms.
I just live with it, because whatever, I don't mind the top being a little tight, but it is frustrating.
I've found myself not even considering brands where I've found inconsistent sizing, but going back again and again to ones I can reliably pick a size and know it'll fit, no returns.
This doesn't tell the whole story either. In Europe, for example, plenty of women are within the "healthy" BMI range, for example, but their muscle- and fat-distribution is such that various clothes made for normal weight do not fit.
For example, for some women, finding pants which are both large enough at the hips, and thin enough at the waist, is a nightmare. You can be well into the bottom range of healthy weight, like closer to underweight, and still have clothes for normal weights be WAY too tight, because of fat and muscle distribution and build.
The article itself gives numerous reasons why this is not true:
* Patterns are scaled up and down from a single original pattern. However actual bodies do not follow simple scaling. As a result, variation in body size will always result in clothes that fit poorly.
* There is not a universal set of body proportions. The article shows a categorization system with 9 buckets. I suspect women's body's simply have a wider range of shapes than men's leading some men (possibly including you?) to discount this.
* Some brands literally don't stock even the median adult women's size!
I think this is why stretchy materials are getting more and more popular. The women in my house use stretchy pants almost exclusively, because they are much more forgiving with body shape. As long as the waist fits, the rest will fit well enough.
Relevant: TIL that while male rowers are classified as "lightweight" or "heavyweight", larger female rowers are called "openweight" instead of "heavyweight". <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/32p2ka/til_th...>
It was originally introduced to give countries with shorter people a chance to compete (as rowing depends a lot on height), but in practice it mainly resulted in promising candidates who didn't quite make the cut for heavyweight being forced into eating disorders.
Lightweight rowing has been cut from the olympics already, so to a lot of organisations it has lost its relevance. There are still world championships, but I bet it is only a matter of time before it'll disappear there as well.
1. Luxury fashion thrives on exclusivity, which is exclusionary.
2. Clothing size standards do not match diverse body types.
3. There is no sizing standard, and companies size however they want.
The number one thesis takeaway for me, that I didn’t realize as a woman even after years of dealing with sizing drama, is that clothing manufacturers exclusively market to hourglass body shape alone — which some might recognize better as “pinup model” proportions. As a non-hourglass along with the vast majority of other U.S. women, it’s quite the shock to discover that megacorps are targeting a fraction of the market (hourglass) rather than the largest segment (rectangle).
If that majority of rectangular-shaped women existed and wanted to buy rectangular-shaped clothes, we would see brands with that product everywhere.
So either they’re not majority or they are happy enough with the existing product designs so they won’t buy an alternative rectangular design.
As a 152lb American male, I weigh 11% less than the average American woman.
I have no idea about imperial units so it’s a difficult read.
Anuway, she always struggled to find clothes that fit her well because she's small. Her uncle had to tailor a lot of her clothes growing up. A while back she found a fashion-as-a-service called Short Story, which markets itself for petite women; it basically sends her clothes every X-months and she tries them on and send back the ones she doesn't like or fit, tells her stylist why she is sending them back, and pays for the ones she keeps. Every time she keeps something from them she donates something from her wardrobe (net zero is the goal). And she looks great in them! They're fashionable (to the degree that my dev opinion on fashion matters), modest, and most importantly they fit her well.
Disclosure: I interviewed with Short Story last year as a consulting role but it didn't pan out.
I went to Vietnam and noticed the sizing difference for myself: suddenly I was oversized. I've also seen the opposite in other countries where sizes are much bigger and I'm on extra small sizings.
Vietnam is great for getting tailored clothing too - if you can avoid the worst of the tourist tailors.
Worth a try, if you can find a country that has a style she likes...
I did get a suit cheaply made and tailored in Malaysia back in college. One of the few pieces of clothing that still fits me perfectly now.
I go to a clothing shop at the start of a new collection, and look at men's shirts for a given type:
- there's 10 XS, 10 M, 10 XXL versions
I go towards end of the season:
- there's like 1 M remaining, but 8 XS, 8 XXL.
Like if they were surprised and had no data that most population is M.
This is so obviously untrue. It's painfully obvious that the less they waste, the more profit they make, so there's plenty of incentive for them to order the right amount.
> Once I compared my personalized sloper to commercial patterns and retail garments, I had a revelation: clothes were never made to fit bodies like mine. It didn’t matter how much weight I gained or lost, whether I contorted my body or tried to buy my way into styles that “flatter” my silhouette, there was no chance that clothes would ever fit perfectly on their own. Finally I understood why.
Later they show how J.Crew has a certain ration between hip/waist for all sizes. Even if you had the same sized waist, chances are you wouldn't have the same sized hips as they expect. Most bodies just aren't that shape.
The distribution in Japan would be very different.
It'd be interesting to see this study repeated after a decade of GLP-1 drugs being available (and cheaper).
I'm built very tall and very spindly, so there are certain body shapes that I will never have (or want, but that's a different question) purely from the point of view that my body just isn't the right base shape to produce them.
It might be possible to have a one-dimensional sizing scale for men's clothing, but it seems impossible for women's. There's at least 3 or 4 dimensions that are independent and nothing to do with being fat.
It's true, everyone can be not fat. But I don't blame people for this. I blame fast food and us not cracking down on food addiction as a society.
I assume they mean circumference rather than diameter, but this is still a shocking increase in only 30 years. I knew the obesity epidemic was an ever-increasing problem, but this really puts it into perspective. I wonder if we'll ever fully understand the causes behind this rapid shift.
https://www.health.com/average-waist-size-for-women-11796627...
I think the problem is not whether we’ll fully understand the causes, but more that every cause we have identified to date would require regulating corporations in profit-damaging ways to solve, and it is likely that any future causes we reveal will be the same. That’s anathema in the U.S.: profits are sacrosanct to the two primary political parties, discounting their occasional extremists who argue (correctly) that we should be regulating in favor of consumers, not profits. Typically, the desire for a ‘full’ explanation is used to delay or derail efforts to implement solutions to each single proven explanation, and so I tend to caution against pursuing a complete answer first, and instead recommend asking why we have not yet addressed the known causes while continuing to search for more.
>>the advent of chemical non-sugar sweeteners, which in recent decades are turning out to be just as harmful as sugar, only differently.
requires citations. People lump sugar substitutes together as one class of drugs, but they very much are not. Some are sugar alcohols, some are glycosides, others are different molecules. Different molecules have different mechanisms of action and paths of metabolism.
Much like one might take a "blood pressure" medication, it is a large umbrella consisting of chemically distinct ACE-inhibitors, ARBs, thiazide diuretics, loop diuretics, calcium channel blockers (dihydropyridine and non-dihydropyridine distinctly), and more. These drugs generally do have class effects, but the class effects from an ACE inhibitor (bradykinin cough, angioedema, etc) are quite different from diuretics (hyponatremia, frequent urination, etc). One person's 'blood pressure medicine' is not the same as the next.
I agree that the prevalence of sugar substitutes in the western diet demands scrutiny, and I am concerned about their effects, however any current research lumping them all together without strict attention to pharmacological mechanisms supported by translational research is worse than useless - it is misleading.
In the sense of what we 'know' about modern medicine, we 'know' almost nothing about sugar substitutes. The body of evidence is vanishingly thin. I want more research into this topic, but right now, it's just not there.
In the past there used to be always one family member staying at home and cooking food. That is not the case anymore for many families.
I knew since the beginning how important is to eat home made meals, so I told my wife when we started our family that we would always eat home made food every day unless we were out for another reason. We all have healthy weight levels.
40% of Americans are obese, and 75% are overweight. 30 years ago only 20% were obese.
I can't find a citation now, but I recall reading at some point that weight gain with age (in adulthood) didn't used to happen very much before the obesity epidemic, though nowadays we take it as a given. I wish I could find a source for/against that idea, I'm curious now if it's true.
But the reason even that isn't done is mostly history and market expectations. There are clothing categories that sell in actual dimensions, and (aside from the terrible dimensional accuracy of clothing in general) it works fine. But those are all on the "men's" side, and it seems the industry believes women will not like buying based on actual numbers.
I believe there are still quite some shoe factories in Germany and Eastern Europe, but are mostly dedicated to Hiking and Mountanieering shoes
Why not tailored clothing at scale? Have a set of portable body measurements that can be sent to any retailer - make an order and have it sent from factory to door in a week or two.
Or get a size that is close enough - bring it to your neighborhood tailor. Most alterations are simple and not very expensive.
Unfortunately sizing is just a leaky abstraction. You are trying to distill many variables into a single dimension. It will never be particularly great.
The problem underlying this is that retailers do not want to advertise for more than one body shape, because that not only reduces their total profit (9x the models hired, 9x the designs to create, more complicated size ranges than simply blowing up a size 6 design with a photocopier), it also would force everyone in the industry to be revealed all at once as cheaping out on design and production, once the use of H for hourglass spread (since anyone who isn’t using a letter code is obviously Hourglass Only, based on the data). Corporations have multiple strong financial incentives not to do this, and their shareholders would revolt and fire any CEO who tried to reduced profits by incurring massive increases in design cost, product variants, model staffing, and retail/online logistics for the sake of “unattractive” non-hourglass women.
I think the EU’s “no more shredding clothes” initiative is going to have some very interesting ramifications over the next few years, as clothing manufacturers will have to choose between seeing people buy their unsold inventory at the local equivalent to Goodwill here in the U.S., or have to start selling clothing “made to order” with only a limited quantity kept in the store for try-on purposes. Apple, weirdly, already has a perfect logistics pipeline for exactly this approach; you can get an off-the-shelf option in stores, or you can customize it in eight to ten different ways and get something labeled “CTO” — Custom To Order. But that’s not a cheap logistics pipeline for a company that only has to set the copier inflation percentage based on your size choice today — the designs are for size 6 and then they blow it up by 140% for size 10 or whatever (yes, seriously, for real). So it may end up that once the clothing industry has to start making clothing on-demand, they will quickly expand into more options than the “print a ream of t-shirts and try to sell them in 3 months” profit-maxing approach that they’ve all coalesced into today.
This is already pretty much the case. The larger retailers have been very happy to push all "tricky" sizes to the internet, and just stock a larger variety of items in a size or three in the store instead. They'd rather stock 15 items in 3 sizes each than 5 items in 9 sizes each.
If you're not the same size as the median high-volume in-person shopaholic, physical stores these days are closer to a catalog to browse through combined with a post office for pickup.
Combine that with today's fast fashion, and I wouldn't be surprised if some sizes are only being manufactured in the dozens or low-hundreds quantities!
It is more expensive, but not impossibly so, and they fairly aggressively discount for larger orders which presumably amortizes some of the overheads.
I remember multiple iterations of various made-to-measure clothing initiatives, dating to at least the 1990s. Levi Straus offered this in its San Francisco Union Square flagship at one point, as did other clothing producers. One of the few extant references I can find is a 16 year old Tripadvisor question with answers indicating that the option existed many years earlier than that: <https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g60713-i30-k3392413-Ma...>
More recently, in the late aughts / early teens, there was something of a flood of made-to-measure selvage jeans merchants, though I believe these have also largely ceased to operate. When I checked in on them, prices were far higher than off-the-rack options, not by percentages but by multiples, as in 3--5 times as expensive. I suspect that these to remained niche.
The broader lesson is probably that mass-produced, mediocre-fitting clothes simply offer vastly greater economies of scale that no element of automation or technology can overcome.
For men (speaking from experience) and likely women having tailored clothing made in a lower-wage region (Hong Kong, India, and Thailand seem to be the usual suspects) may remain an option. Or the self-provisioning option via a sewing machine, as noted in TFA.
Closer to HN's interests: similar failures of promises for individually-tailored technologically-mediated options to emerge, unless those serve the interests of advertisers or other mass manipulators seems to be a profoundly persistent tendency. In light of present trends (AI / LLM) I'm calibrating expectations accordingly.
There is also a "Levi's Taylor Shop" option at somewhat more locations: <https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/features/tailor-shop>.
I think, this is a misconception, some "simple" things like resizing a shirt, when done properly, might require multiple hours + a decent amount of skills and the alterations might be cheap because they are performed by underpaid workers. Nonetheless, I like the idea of supporting local tailors and I'd be in for paying premium for a local premium product.
Shirts: one tube sock for the torso, two tube socks for the arms, zero ends closed; Pants: two tube socks for the legs, one tube sock for the torso, zero ends closed; Gloves: five tube socks for the appendages, one tube sock for the palm, zero-to-five ends closed depending on fingerless style; Socks: one tube sock with one end closed; Hats: one tube sock with one end closed.
So it's entirely possible to construct a sock weaving pattern that ends up weaving a head-to-toe single garment for you out of some kind of stretchy yarn, that you would then have to figure out how to clamber into through the face hole (since that's the only open-ended sock) — but that coverall (literally!) pattern would have to be constructed for your complete set of measurements [2] in every regard, and that's an exceedingly costly amount of labor (measurement, knitting, measurement, unraveling, repeat). You can scale down that cost for seamless tops or bottoms somewhat, which you'll absolutely see high-fashion retailers do, but at the end of the day it's the cost of bespoke-tailored clothing from scratch plus the cost of bespoke-knit fabric from scratch plus the cost of not getting it exactly right the first time. None of this is intended to criticize your desire — I hate awful seams and I have collected clothing that has seams that don't bother me and/or are extravagantly seams because the sweater was intentionally panel-knit inside-out! — but I wanted to offer a bit of depth into why it's difficult to find seamless. You have to start and end the knit somewhere, and that's exponentially simpler if you start and end the knit more than once; thus, seams.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_7Limzg3O60 or https://blog.tincanknits.com/2013/10/03/socks/
[2] https://cwandt.com/products/personal-body-unit-index makes the point nicely enough, though I believe you need Even More And Different measurements for tailoring [3] that were out of scope for this particular creation:
> Che-Wei’s Mom often does this weird finger walking dance along the edges of furniture, fabric or random stuff. She knows that the span of her hand from thumb to pinky measures 18cm. So she can quickly size things up. We always thought this was funny, until we realized it was GENIUS and started to copy her. We made Personal Body Unit Index so we can be more like Che-Wei’s Mom.
[3] Men's tailoring measurements are generally optimized for a couple dozen taken at most; further variability gets handled through 'adjustments' or 'on the fly' rather than formally at the construction stage. I think I can identify a couple dozen measurements just on my torso alone — just the bust is an entire three-dimensional construct that has to be measured over, across, under, rise, attachment shape, attachment height and width, volume, not to mention desired support/lift/shaping, and that's before we even get to the usual waist-hips-butt conglomerate, torso/arm length, shoulder width, upper/lower arm width that men are familiar with, and the perhaps less-familiar belly shape/distribution (it isn't always above-the-belt as is typical for men) and front abdomen curve shape (often without a certain male sexual characteristic, often with varying fat pattern distributions, see also belly).
And hey, they don't really need pockets, anyway, right?
edit: Really should have used the /s, I guess - women's clothing has some appalling aspects to it, one of which is notoriously tiny pockets, which is a source of frustration for many women. For some, it even comes as a shock when they find out men can do things like put phones in their pockets.
The emotional manipulation surrounding many women's products is a different beast entirely from what men experience, generally.
I have difficulties believing that your observations are a real issue. If they were, rest assured the free market would have found out about it and would have offered the right product for those women.
Reality is that most women buy based on looks and not practicality. I really had not heard before your comment any women complaining about small pockets.
I've had the exact opposite experience. I've heard this complaint many, many times, and for good reason because it really is laughable.
> Reality is that most women buy based on looks and not practicality.
Well, it's a tradeoff, isn't it? As a man, I also wear a (fake) leather jacket that has some fake pockets and I complain about them, because they're dumb and unnecessary. Still like the look of it, which is why I bought it, because it's not a -huge- issue.
To put it another way, why couldn't you have both? Why not have good-looking clothes that also have proper pockets? That's the really ridiculous part about it.
Also, there's a third variable you didn't factor in at all: Comfort. It's not enough to produce clothes that look good, they need to fit as well...which is exactly what the article is about.
So now you need to find clothes that are at least mostly comfortable, look at least okay to you and have proper pockets. And that is the point where you're really going to have a hard time in women's clothing and that's why a lot of the time, women will take the more comfortable, better-looking option. 2 out of 3 at least. But the fact remains that the pockets are completely idiotic.
> Victorian women were told that they “had four external bulges already — two breasts and two hips — and a money pocket inside their dress would make an ungainly fifth.”
https://fashionmagazine.com/style/womens-pockets/ (which cites that among many others) is a good survey of the historical and current pockets issues for those not yet familiar.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/magazine/the-year-in-idea...
Womens sizes... like Jesus Christ, I don't know how ANY women tolerate this shit. It's completely made up. A size 0 in one brand feels similar to a size 3 in another, feels similar to Large in another, feels similar to -1 in another. Anything you buy and like, you effectively have to pray they keep making forever, and always buy from that brand or you risk getting something else that doesn't fit correctly.
I've never shopped a product category that feels so utterly hostile to consumer comprehension, except MAYBE microtransactions in videogames. And I'm not meaning to be dramatic, that's the only other type of market I've experienced in life where it feels like my attempts to understand what I'm buying are being deliberately frustrated like this.
The schemes are ruthless and never end, and it's all arbitrary fashion. In some ways, it's a lot easier being a guy.
This article mostly discusses waist size, for which I'm in the lower quartile. But after 40 years of testosterone poisoning my underbust is above the median. Finding clothing that fits and is flattering is really difficult!
Maybe there are special clothing shops for transvestites that would provide a better fitting product?
When you get into the overweight category, sizing becomes a lot more difficult, because then the ratios that are relatively standard for non overweight bodies (like waistline to tallness) completely break down.
So now you don't need just one parameter, but at least two: waist and tallness. And this causes the number of different sizes to explode. So instead of (S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL, XXXXL), you'll need (S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL) waist x (S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL) length. And it becomes unmanageable for brands to cover all the different sizes without having a large amount of waste.
Men trousers and shirts do this, because generally men fashion don't change that fast, so the brands can carry many models for a longer time period.
The of the only reasons I've been wearing the same pants is because I haven't found anything else that fits well
I myself have a very standard body shape, to the point that almost always fit perfectly in all clothes. Nevertheless I always try them on, there’s never guaranteed that they will look nice on me.
[1] https://fashionschooldaily.com/cintra-wilson-vs-jc-penney-th...
I have similar issues with shoes, and I’m in my 60s. My wife refuses to buy me shoes.
If I buy Clarks, I’m size 9. If I buy New Balance, I’m size 10.5. If I buy Hoka, I’m size 11. It’s crazy.
You have shoes at home that fit you well, and I have shoes at home that fit me well. If we have shoes that fit well in common, then I know which size to get in your models. Scale that up to millions of users and the problem of sizing is solved. The service is live, it works and it's collecting people's sizes.
Don't want to post the URL but it pops up when you search for shoe models and size guides on Google. Just wanted to let you know that your wife might be able to buy shoes for you again soon.
I chose my usual size, but Amazon told me "nope we think you want one size smaller, based on your history and our data for this product".
I made a page about this myself - Model is 6'2" Wearing Size Medium - https://pilk.website/2/model-is-6-2-wearing-size-medium
Tentrees, Fox and Prana are the brands I've found that consistently fit my upper body.
Good news, Italian sports cars and motorcycles seem designed for our body.
I wish they simply measured clothing in centimeters, and all the complexity could be left behind.
Funny you should mention shoes, because this is exactly what european shoe sizes are. It's really just a case of, yet again, Americans stick with an ass-backwards system (inches/pounds/feet, fahrenheit, etc.) when the rest of the world has settled on something much more logical and reasonable.
Not just in sizing, which is also a problem — my polo shirt and dress shirt sizes vary between M and XXL depending on the brand, and even my shoe size can vary up to 3 numbers, it shouldn't be rocket science to establish some quantitative standards.
There's also the issue of buying a polo shirt and having it bleed because they've decided to save a few cents on the color-blocking product, and in the first wash, it ruins not only the shirt itself but the entire laundry load.
And the fact that a cotton garment may or may not shrink, and it's a complete lottery how much it will shrink, so sometimes even trying it on in person is useless.
And then there's the fact that someone up there decides that this year a certain trend is "coming" (let's say, pants with buttons instead of zippers) and that's all they sell. If you like zippers and you need to buy pants that year, tough luck.
And all of this is compounded by the fact that even buying expensive doesn't guarantee you'll get spared from all this nonsense... I'm not a cheapskate at all, I don't mind paying if I know a garment will be reliable and durable, but sometimes you buy a designer item and the quality is absolute garbage.
All of this, by the way, is much worse in Europe than in the US (I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's because in the US you always use a dryer, so they have no choice but to make clothes a bit more robust for that market).
If other industries did these things, consumers would be up in arms. If any other product seemed to behave well when you superficially check it on the store, but then completely failed on very first use (like a shirt that shrinks or bleeds), you would return it. But in clothing all of this is normalized.
It also amuses me when people complain about the carbon footprint of AI: if they saw the footprint of the textile industry (compared to the actual usefulness of clothes designed to last for one season and be replaced...).
I once had jeans with buttons and first I thought it was terrible, but after 2-3 uses I got used to it, so it's not a big deal I guess.
And about quality there is a youtube channel where they cut shoes in half and rate the quality of the build, and based on the couple of shoes I've checked out, the price and brand rarely correlates with good quality.
As with everything else, when buying expensive longterm items (like a leather boot), it is worth doing some research into which option is the best.
I went to re-buy the "same" jeans ~8 months after my initial purchase and the size I was wearing didn't fit in the new jeans. Tried another pair with a different wash and was back to the original size. I have tried on jeans from the same brand with similar cuts and came away two sizes apart. I can swing several sizes as a starting point between some stores. I get it, not every jean is going to be identical, but it isn't a ridiculous ask to be able to have a size I can start at and be within a size of what I need.
Part of why retailers are afraid to change sizing is that lots of women install their clothing into their ego and brag about it socially. I don’t approve, but I recognize the extrinsic cultural circumstances* that pressure them to do so. It’s a a lot harder to brag about being a size 49-42-48–8-30 than it is to brag about being a 20UK. (The /22 in 20/22 UK, the common size these days, is silent, because size lying is normalized.)
It would make more sense instead for them to choose an anchor measurement and a body type modifier; but that gets into the problems of having to annotate nine different body type letters onto a numeric size, not to mention having to design clothing that looks good on nine different body types, and having to hire models of nine different body types. The modeling industry is unprepared to staff that need, too!
* The phrase “pinup-hourglass male-gaze body-shape imposed-ideal” serves as an excellent starting point for research on that nightmare. For those unfamiliar, ask your friends who are women about that exact phrase, and remember to listen rather than critique their potentially-lengthy reply. I’m focusing on the sizing discussion and leave that topic as an exercise for the reader.
Many online stores use outdated or outright wrong sizes charts. One of Europe's largest online retailers don't even bother providing official manufacturer size charts at all. They have one generic size chart for almost all of the shoes, so it's pretty much down to the consumer to return and retry. Kind of crazy state of things.
(Then there are men's "relaxed" fits, which bear even less relationship to actual measurements. Maybe "slim" sizing is closer to the old system? Even when they fit my waist - like, six nominal inches bigger than standard! I'm not that much wider - they don't fit my legs, so I don't know.)
None of that's anywhere close to as ridiculous as women's sizing, but give 'em time and I'm sure it will be.
It’s basically the only brand where I can buy online without trying it on, and still be confident that it will fit as expected.
Note that, at least AIUI, the measurement printed on the pair is the wearer's waist measurement, so we thus expect the measured circumference of the top of the jeans to be slightly wider, since men's jeans are not intended to sit at the waist.
A few concrete issues:
(1) they complain there are no international standards - And? Why should Japan, who's average size be much smaller than the USA be required to use USA standards? Their population doesn't need to care about people outside of Japan. You could say they should relabel the clothing, all that would do is raise the price and effectively make poor people poorer.
(2) they show people "Americans" get heavier - That might be reality but maybe being reminded you're wearing extra large is a good thing? Like you really are "overweight" and that's unhealthy. You can choose to ignore that but the rest of us aren't required re-label you as something you're not
(3) They graph high-fashion like LV and show they don't have large sizes. So what? Ferrari doesn't make cheap cars. I'm not required to make product that suits you. If you don't like what I'm offering, pick some other company's products. I don't like donuts, I don't go to a donut store and demand they offer pizza. Nor do I go to jeans store and demand they carry suits.
(4) they complain about vanity sizes - why is this an issue? Try the clothing on. If it fits buy it, if not don't. That's what I do because duh!, different people and companies follow different patterns. Some fit, some don't.
If you want to fix any of these - feel free to start your own clothing brand. Clearly you believe the market isn't being served. If so, put your money where your mouth is rather than requiring others to risk theirs
I'm 5'11"/180cm with US11/EU45 feet. They didn't sell boots that fit me in Japan. I got a deal on an "XL" jacket that the salesman insisted I buy, because I was the only person to have ever come into the store that it fit. (It's the only thing I've ever worn labelled "XL.")
in the end I have one pair of shoes which is fairly tight and other pair which is very loose, but got used to that, easier than tight one
and I tried to read reviews where people describe how accurate are the sizes for sizes in XL, I am quite skinny and very tall so I end up with something like 3 or 4XL to get ordinary size
btw. wife got used to European sizing where she buys XS or S size and she had very bad surprise after shopping in China where she found out she is now by Chinese sizes considered more like M or L since those XS and S Chinese sizes are pretty much for small girls :-))
I am a 4XL in China (or was, when I was there last) and a S in the US.
That blows my mind.
Women desperately want pants with pockets, but pockets throw off the aesthetic, so they don't sell well.
I also don't know a single woman who enjoyed the hunt starting in their teens for a pair of jeans that actually fit. I exclusively shop online because at least I can reference a size chart using actually real measurements. They're still lying to me but at least I have a solid chance of the clothing actually fitting.
While I don't doubt that there are women who disliked seeing the number go up on their waist size, I'm still not sure that if there was an easy sizing metric we could use, that it wouldn't get used. The example in the article was basically about a great many measurements and I could see how that would get skipped. Most people don't have tailors tape lying around, but I wonder if that international number was on everything if we'd see women like it more.
Many people, especially women, suffer from peer pressure. You just seem to lack the empathy to acknowledge that a lot of them really struggle because of clothing sizes, out of fear of being stigmatised.
Wait, I buy my pants with a waist and length size. So the problem is already solved?
A “large” men’s shirt from Uniqlo is totally different from a “large” from Volcom and so on. Start making your own clothes and realize there’a a thousand dimensions to a shirt and “waistline” is barely scratching the surface.
Don’t get me started on shoes, especially if you have wide feet. Something like “wide” means totally different things. Unlike clothes, poorly fitting shoes will absolutely destroy you.
At least pants have WxL.
I’ve come to chalk up clothes sizing as a natural complexity of life.
Never got this, nor the bizarre dysfunctional pockets on womens clothes.
In wartime/rationing, the government stipulated hem size, banned turn-ups, oxford bags, specified jacket lengths, cloth weights. For working class people, clothes IMPROVED. (de-mob (de-mobilisation) suits were for some working men the best suit of clothes they had ever owned)
That clearly has the function to sell purses and it works very well - even in this thread a commenter is writing (paraphrased): I'd rather wear something cute and use a purse... The accessory market in the U.S. is worth $ 798 billion so nobody is keen to subtract from that by sewing on functional pockets.
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/fashion-...
> Once I compared my personalized sloper to commercial patterns and retail garments, I had a revelation: clothes were never made to fit bodies like mine. It didn’t matter how much weight I gained or lost, whether I contorted my body or tried to buy my way into styles that “flatter” my silhouette, there was no chance that clothes would ever fit perfectly on their own.
Carhartts size up a waist size to account for shrinking, and I can almost reliably find a 34/34. Finding 32/34 in other pants is a challenge. On the subject of vanity sizing, I’m 15 pounds heavier than I was 20 years ago, and I still wear a 32/34. Which is why all those measurements are qualified above.
Finding shirts that fit is a similar challenge. Fitted shirts can usually be found in 16 34-35 with an athletic cut. Letter sizes are a total crapshoot. Sometimes I’m a L, sometimes an M. If I’m an M across the gut, frequently the shoulders are far too tight.
Not that I’m complaining as such, but I do agree that the sizes encompass too little information about body shape.
Yes, obesity is clearly an epidemic. But discounting the entire article's premise to point that out?
It would be particularly interesting to repeat this sizing study using the garment length to identify where it falls in 'height' median for women, and then identifying what 'age' median the garment's waistline is calibrated for. I can certainly guess what the results will be from personal experience on a per-retailer basis, and it would be a useful way to mathematically identify 'underserved niches' in today's market to target with appropriately-fit clothing (without a body scan).
* doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0172245 (2017) https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/44820
I have just anecdotal experience here in Europe, but I know for a fact that all the females in my family have kept the same size since they were 16-18 years old. That’s also my experience with the male side of the family.
While I'm well aware weight gain requires over consumption, I feel there is an under appreciated importance on being somewhat mobile rather than sitting/laying down for 23 hours a day
The hypothesis was: if you produce it, it will be consumed (Say's Law). Lower prices mean larger quantities demanded. (I know, it sounds like a confounding variable, you need a cross-sectional regression)
Normalize going to a tailor, instead of grumbling about how you aren't benefiting enough from the sweatshops mass retailers are running.
An even better angle is educating Starbucks to stop selling unhealthy garbage.
The idea that all blame rests on individuals and corporations are blame-free is crazy. They have way more agency over what we consume than individuals do.
It is true that corporations spend vast resources attempting to lure consumers into their webs but you do have agency! You can resist!
Vote with your wallet and strip these bad actors of the power you handed to them when you gave up.
You know they have Starbucks in other countries without an obesity crisis?
No one is forcing you or I to order a particular drink at Starbucks; they literally put the number of calories directly next to the menu item. The blame is 100% on the individuals making their own health decisions.
Oh and I also fainted the first time I donated blood, because I did not know I should not donate blood while fasting. Again, sugary drinks helped.
It’s less prevalent in EU and even less so in some East Asian countries.
> The inter-generational struggle to find clothes that fit more than a tiny portion of women
But I’m not sure if that’s a better title for HN or not. I sure like it, though.
And pants are still kind of doable, but mountain bikes? My enduro rig is size XS on 27.5 rims and with manufacturers dropping 27.5ers I expect this to be the last bike that feels anywhere close to "nimble". Also RIP women riders, but that's been the case for years now.
I also have proportionally small feet (size 39 EU but wide as fuck, so I only wear expensive minimalist shoes with wide toe boxes) and small hands (RIP piano, I'm not hitting an octave ever).
> Vanity sizing provides a powerful marketing strategy for brands. Companies found that whenever women needed a size larger than expected, they were less likely to follow through on their purchases. Some could even develop negative associations with the brand and never shop there again. But when manufacturers manipulated sizing labels, leading to a more positive customer experience, brands could maintain a slight competitive edge.
How one can seriously write the same thing twice in form of contradiction and make different conclusion?
I'm not the target demographic, but the main problems I have are proportions not simply waistsize. I was under the impression a size range [xs,s,m,l,xl] was supposed to adjust girth (bust, waist, hip, thigh) while leaving the vertical measurements unchanged (inseam, rise). Because nothing fits, I purchase a sizing range with the intention to keep just one and return the rest. It makes for pretty funny discussions: $500 on <clothing> WTF! Anyway I've started measuring clothing dimensions and have found that the brands I shop generally tend to adjust other dimensions in a 2:1 girth:height ratio. This means that if I want a snug waistline I'll have a tight crotch or be forced to wear pants on or below the hip. Now I like wearing pants somewhere between waist and hip. There's a band of fat/padding/sinew (?) just above the hips that makes for the sweet spot in terms of comfort and utility. I don't understand clothing that's meant to sit on the hips... so uncomfortable.
As a rule of thumb I tend to shop Asian clothing stores in the US because they tend to better fit my proportions, but lately it's become hit-or-miss, i.e uniqlo. I've also got some pretty weird proportions due to my exercise regimen.
Also you've got to love brands that don't provide actual sizes. Wtf!
Size ranges are almost always infuriating. I sample my measurements throughout the day to get an accurate range and average. This is invariably what occurs:
store sizes: x1-x2, x3-x4, x5-x6
me: x2-x3
Infuriating! Non-contiguous ranges suck!
Then there's this little unexplained morsel:
> The average woman’s waistline today is nearly 4 inches wider than it was in the mid-1990s.
Their data is drawn from the US, so I'm wondering if this is related to the obesity epidemic, or a general change in silhouette. I was under the impression that historically, humans are trending taller and skinnier.
One might argue that the size on their label is not supposed to indicate the size of the garment waistband, but the waist size of the wearer who would find it comfortable, but even with that interpretation it doesn't work out right.
Charles Tyrwhitt have this guide where they tell you what to measure for shirts :
https://www.charlestyrwhitt.com/au/size-guides/szg-formal-sh...
and for trousers :
https://www.charlestyrwhitt.com/au/szg-trousers-4-2021.html
Presumably some online shops for women have something similar?
Right now, women consumers put up with one-ish body type (although fit model shapes vary by brand) - manufacturers thus make up to ten sizes or so of any given garment. Google fashion industry waste if you want to learn some depressing things, but - because of fashion lead times, production methods, etc, a lot of these clothes will not get sold. So there’s production waste.
There are roughly 10 core body types according to this website. So, to make ‘properly’ shaped garments for a much larger group of women is going to take roughly 120 different garments for a single design.
This just isn’t going to work for manufacturers given current production methods. I’m working on a fun sweater company right now, and it’s a very analog process - with humans and production and yarn all in different countries - ending in a single garment for analysis that is then put on a model for photography. I cannot imagine trying to scale it to 100 different shape/size combos.
Upshot - right now: choose from the following:
1) create mild differentiation and hit a product target that blends looking good on the site/shelf/model with one that looks good on the customer; keep 90% of the market
2) lean in hard on one of the “10”-ish body types - give up the rest of the market, but have happy customers
3) Try to sell stuff that can get auto-sized properly via algorithm and delivered “on-demand”
Most big companies are big, and therefore chose 1. Some smaller companies chose 2. In the happy circumstance that they chose 2 for conventionally attractive bodies, you’ve heard of them (Chanel). Some have transitioned into this space over a longer period, like Burberry. If you’re not a target customer, they may still have fans, but you might not have heard of them, e.g. Good American.
A few companies have tried 3 — direct to consumer via brick and mortar retail — (there was an MIT company deploying Shima Seki knitting on Newbury street in boston years ago), but they inevitably seem to move to a fast deployment D2C shipping model.
I think this is likely because if you go into a boutique you do not want to pay $600 for a garment and then have to wait three hours for it to get made. Online this feels more palatable.
So, we’ll probably see some continued innovation on the robot-knitting side of the world over the next ten years. In the meantime, companies mostly do what makes economic sense. And, it’s worth noting, operating the “automated” knitting machines and designing for them is no joke, it’s hard — really hard, and the software can be abysmal. So, this is an industry that’s a long way from rapid change, at least right now.
tweenager - a young person between the ages of approximately eight and twelve (Cambridge Dictionary)
seems even dictionaries can't decide on the age
Btw S M L sizes are retarded, why they can't just write normal size like 128 (cm), 134, 152 for cm of height as is commonly used in Europe, my wife regularly checks kid sizes since some teenagers are taller than her. Sadly for adults it's more complicated.
I hate buying pants as adult male since it's complete mess, waist size in Europe in inches, length you never know from where it's actually measured, so if shopping online it's always lottery especially since I am relatively skinny and everything is made either for short or tall fatsos, so if I wanna normal length I end up with huge waist.
>Many have started to outgrow the junior’s size section.
Ummmmm.... What? I wore junior’s sizes well into my 30s. Am I really that much of an outlier?
However, men's clothing is generally rather shapeless, whereas women's clothing is usually quite figure-fitting.
Women also have a lot more variety in body shape: breasts are a thing, for starters, and there's a wide variety in which areas fat is primarily stored.
Is sizing an issue for men as well? Yeah, probably. But it is significantly worse for women.
The random sizing today is great:
* If you want a better fit, go physically to a store instead of shopping online and try them on.
* the vanity part is also fine, no need to cause outrage at raising the number and making people depressed cause they think they're even more "fat". It doesn't need to be "optimized"
* Only serves online retail to "standardize", but guess what, 15th standard also sucks... <cue xkcd comic about standards>.
Enjoyed the presentation of the site. :)
Cool. If you don't have an hourglass shape, none of them will fit you properly. They'll either be way out in the hips, or the thighs, or the waist, or the length (for pants), or the waist, the length, the shoulders, the bust, or the arms (for shirts), and don't get me started on shoes. What now?
I'm a 5'6 145lbs adult male. Y'know how many clothes are made that fit me? T-shirts, size S, fitted; and dress shirts by Express. That's basically it. Pants don't fit me because the legs aren't short enough, the crotch isn't long enough, and I don't have a butt/thighs. Basically no jacket fits me. Shoes? One of my feet is a different size than the other.
I, too, have to try on literally every garment I see that sort-of-looks-like it might fit. I have tried hundreds of pairs of jeans, dress shirts, jackets. When I find one that fits, I buy two of them (or every one in a different color). And then I gain or lose weight... and the cycle repeats. I probably own 30 pairs of jeans, and a closet full of shirts that I almost never wear, but one day might want, and will never be able to find anywhere else.
Human bodies are diverse. Standard sizes don't work. But you know what will give you the perfect fit? Tailoring. Buy something too big, take it to a neighborhood drycleaner & tailor, and have them alter it to fit you. It's that simple. If you're worried about not having "enough" clothes and want to save money, it's not hard to use a sewing machine (if I learned, you can). In retrospect, I should've used tailoring rather than constantly hunt for fitting clothes. But I suspect I hunt the racks for the same reason women do: the idea that, somewhere out there, there's a better item I don't have.
I don't think there's a way to reform the fashion industry, as it produces what the market bears. You could also - and I know this is crazy, but bear with me - wear ill-fitting clothes. Your gender doesn't have to constantly strive to be attractive. We will be into you regardless. And if you're just trying to live up to your own gender's expectations... maybe it's not a great expectation.
All t-shirt sizing is completely wrong for me. I have a longer torso and broader shoulders than anything in standard sizing. Some "big and tall" sizes fit my shoulders and are long enough, but then are also insanely baggy because I'm apparently not fat enough.
This crap affects all of us and awareness that we're all in the same boat is a good thing.
Good content tho.
Buy whatever clothes you're comfortable in and take steps to not be obese, and uninstall social media while you're at it. It really is that simple.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45681833 (Oct 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44728916 (July 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44287383 (June 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36346650 (June 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29857405 (Jan 2022)
I don't want to ban you, but if you keep doing this, we're going to end up doing that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.
As somebody with an atypical body shape, not being able to find things that fit is an endless source of irritation and discomfort