> 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 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.
Respond how?
> lots of different sub-groups of the female population to signal lots of different things
Signal what?
By destandardising sizes. It isn't that hard to standardise if an industry thinks it'll help them; the article suggests there is already a relevant standards body. These companies are probably doing it for a reason. My guess would be maybe someone doesn't want to be an XXL 18 at J Crew so they can go to Reformation where they are more of a Regular 14.
> Signal what?
Age, health and status for women. Group membership too although that is generally to a lesser extent.
Oh. I thought there was an outside chance you intended a positive response. Ah well.
> Age, health and status
I can understand age. But wouldn't everyone want to signal good health and high status?
Yeah, but generally not with fashion. Male fashion tends not to go to the same sort of lengths to showcase legs/torsos/arms/chest that women's fashion does. For men if they want to signal status they tend to buy a car they can't afford or something.
And male health is one of those areas where it is very complicated. A fat, balding man who smells funny can make up for that with a high income. A fat balding woman who smells funny might be able to do the same thing but I can't help feel sceptical at the idea.
Anyway, long story short, the people who aren't using fashion as signalling can just buy a shirt that fits and move on. It's a shirt. They aren't complicated.
The thing with people is that they are all different. There are a lot of people who don't want to be of high status or signal it. There's lots of people who don't really care for health and value other things higher.
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.
"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.
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:
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.
Having read the article, I can't venture a guess without feeling condescending...non-conforming? Compensatory?
Legitimately confused.
Indirect phrasing e.g., "they respond more favorably to products that can help to repair their damaged appearance self-esteem" rather than something direct and easy to understand like "they feel bad that they don't fit, so they end up buying other things like makeup/jewelry to feel better about their appearance".
The average person has a hard time reading and fully understanding a newspaper article or cooking instructions on a pre-prepared meal.
Simpler language is an accessibility issue
Of course, the trick (once you know) is you don't need a comment summarizing it for you. The abstract is alright in a pinch, but the "General Discussion" in psychology papers is the equivalent of "Conclusion" and aims to discuss the results directly. It's still a bit verbose... but the language should at least be very familiar in comparison.
These seem like uniquely U.S.-American issues.
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.
You've got me thinking back to a particular brand and style of (not at all fancy) jeans my wife used to love, that they discontinued, and she's never quite found another that works for her as well. From how she described it, in hindsight, I bet this measurement is the key thing she's not managing to nail on her attempts to find a replacement. Wish she still had a pair, I'd go measure front- and back-rise on them so we'd know what to look for!
Hey, how close are we to being able to 3d print our own clothing?
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".
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.
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.
Really the only bulletproof solution here is to just go try them on in store and see which fits best.
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.
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.
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.
Uniqlo makes a solid one for $25. It's light, comfortable, and unobtrusive. Admittedly, it's not ideal for all styles or situations, but I love that it's large enough for items that are definitely too large or uncomfortable for a pocket, like a book, small notebook, or an accessory.
https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/products/E486766-000/00?colorDi...
standard back pocket = disaster
I've ripped quite a few pants (2? 3?) getting up when the phone in the back pocket gets caught on something. And these were pants I considered "heavy duty".
side-leg pocket = ungainly
Knees and by extension thighs move more than hips, and so items in side pockets tend to bounce around and pull down the waistline, when normally they wouldn't in regular pockets.
In my opinion the best pocket is the breast pocket on jackets and heavier garments. I guess if I were a cop I'd prefer the shoulder holster.
For me, this is basically an evolution and refinement of what I guess I've always been trying to do. As a teen, I'd wear un- or partially-buttoned button-up shirts over my t-shirts. Later, zip hoodies as much of the year as I could get away with. I'd also be sad during this whole period when it'd get too warm and I couldn't get away with wearing a coat everywhere (and it got too warm for a hoodie, once I adopted those) and I'd have to go back to putting my stuff in my trouser pockets. That just sucks.
Now, I've gone to blazers and sport coats, which to me feel like a very similar idea but are wildly more practical[1] for most situations I find myself in, and most folks perceive them as looking a lot better, too.
I've found the heavier winter fabrics to be the easiest to pull off. Simple tweeds, or I've got this one really heavy but soft wool twill in grey-black that works great. Corduroy (there are wool corduroys, too!) covers fall really well, and can do for the cooler parts of spring, too.
Summer is trickier. Unlined Summer-weight wools can add effectively zero heat (and keep some of the sun off you!) but may look too formal, especially when nobody else is wearing a jacket of any kind. Really schlubby unstructured cotton, or a simple linen jacket can work without looking "too fancy", but they're a bit high-maintenance if you don't want them to look wrinkled to hell all the time. I haven't quite found what I'd call a perfect solution for me, here.
[1] Why are they more practical? A blazer or sport coat can usually dress pretty far up, and pretty far down, so has better situational range than a hoodie. I also find the pocket layout is just a ton better. My standard way to wear them is keys in left-hip, phone in right-hip, wallet in left-inner-breast. Generally, these leave tons of room in all three pockets concerned for cramming change or receipts or whatever, none of them are crowded. When traveling, I'll give a whole pocket to my passport, right-inner-breast if that one's big enough, or I might give that to my left hip if I don't need my keys (like when flying or taking a train). Sunglasses can go in the outer breast pocket. Hip pockets are usually big enough to temporarily cram leather or knit-wool gloves in, for the winter, when I need to take those off but don't have anywhere to put them, without overcrowding the pockets enough to cause a problem. I can double up my keys and a big ID/keycard in the left hip, when I need to go into the office, still not crammed tight or anything. The hip pockets are also great for those "pocket size" paperback books, and you can even fit stuff like Modern Library hardcovers in there as long as they're not super-thick volumes, especially the older editions that had smaller dimensions.
> and keep some of the sun off you!
This has become really important to me in the last few years after I realized the impact sunlight has on people's skin (I always think of this [1] or just generally the people I know who don't care about sun exposure). I'm not sure what my ideal summer look will be since I look best in sporty clothing, but don't intend to spend long periods of time with large parts of my skin exposed to direct summer sunlight any longer. The face and back of the neck is the hardest part to fashionably keep safe.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trucker-accumulates-skin-damage...
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
I wish! That number is kinda-sorta-related-to inches, but it's not, at least not anymore. I wear a 31 or 32 jean, but my waist is about 34.5 inches. And any jeans which fit my thighs properly (turns out to be about size 34) will fall off my waist.
Measure your own waist and pants, see what you find!
Sizing is chaos.
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.
If you mean the troll post didn't immediately fade with one downvote that might just be a matter of having two accounts.
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).
I wouldn't be surprised if women of every body shape believe that clothes must be targeting some other shape, except the ones who luck into a sizing-region in which multiple body types have a lot of overlap.
Rectangle (athletics-branch brands), Hourglass (most entire fashion brands), and what I believe is Spoon but could be another shape (e.g. Kardashian).
If I want to buy something I see in Vanity Fair magazine, and it fits me, then I will be buying:
- Rectangle: athleticwear or athletics-adjacent, OR ‘petite’ sizes only
- Spoon: bodycon stretch, primarily
- Hourglass: 95% of the page surface area of the magazine
Other magazines vary this formula, but VF is representing the same three body type divisions that are endemic in U.S. clothing. I think the article fails somewhat in this regard, but I honestly don’t consider it a flaw; they make a solid point and the limited niche exceptions are explicitly ‘niche only’ in the industry in favor of hourglass. I’m pretty certain I can find one niche retailer for any given triplet of { measurements, body shape, aesthetic style } — and it’s the introduction of that third component that reveals the problem. For any given style, say plaid or paisley or bodycon or flowy or “any color that isn’t red, gray, black, or white”, given a set of measurements and a body shape, there may only be one retailer known nationwide to serve that market. Torrid and Long Tall Sally both thrive in their respective triplets’ niches, but if you want clothes that fit you and are styled differently than the one retailer offers, it’s tailoring or nothing. (Incidentally, there’s a severe labor shortage of tailors in the tailoring industry as all the skilled workers are aging out of the workforce, same as CPAs in the accounting industry, so good luck finding one at a reasonable price!)
As a 152lb American male, I weigh 11% less than the average American woman.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.health.com/average-waist-size-for-women-11796627...
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!
I can't wait for a world where order production, inventory, shipping, and returns are all connected by electric cargo drones that fly containers back and forth using solar power — but this also highlights a critical weakness of 'globalization': when your production, retail, shipping, and returns are all colocated within the same small region, you can do JIT or MTO/CTO with a vastly simpler logistics chain. It's why Walmart sells local farmers' eggs at their stores: eggs are an incredibly annoying food to put through a logistics chain, so if you're JIT replenishment like Walmart is, you want to replenish from the closest possible source of eggs — and that's why In'n'out Burger is only in certain areas of the U.S., too, directly corresponding to whether they can get beef at their target price including transportation costs. American Apparel understood this and did relatively well on it for quite some time, until they collapsed for (checks notes) opening hundreds of retail stores using debt and filing for bankruptcy. Don't count your chickens until the eggs have hatched, indeed.
There is an unmet market niche for tailoring with the 'construct the garment from measurements' stage automated, but critically not the human in the loop during initial measurement, construction, updating one's measurements, and so forth. It was critically important when I was having a corset made to ensure that the folks making the corset took my ribcage angle into account, and they didn't have a 'standard' measurement for that, but they were able to ensure that the construction team had it accounted for. That corset cost four digits because a team of humans spent two months sewing it, and for a corset, that's not something you can currently license or build automated production for. It's a 100% CTO garment sold by a 100% CTO shop, because you cannot non-custom a perfectly-fit corset — and an imperfect fit is fine for occasional use for people in the relevant medians, but most people buying a corset are not in those medians. So, tying this back to the main point, if that shop had offered a service for "we'll also make you some shirts", I would have bought them by the truckload because they would be, bar none, the best-fitting shirts I've ever worn. They didn't, because their production capacity was both hyperspecialized and limited, which is fine. But considering mechanical automation lines versus where to use human beings for their competences, I think one hour per few years of labor paid to someone to measure me and make sure they get it right, plus the cost of the machine-production time for the garments, would be world-changing.
Even if the garments are machine-printed and machine-cut and then machine-assisted sewn by humans, building out the CTO logistics backend of Apple's computer ordering processes, combined with an in-person competent human tailor to translate "my concerns" into "less stretch, more structure" and a production team to translate "more structure" into "use a more complex dart structure and use the -5% stretch fabric"? It wouldn't be hand-sewn, but it would fit, and that would devastate a great deal of business that today is grudgingly conceded to hourglass-exclusive retailers where no alternative yet exists.
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.
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 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.
Woven fabrics are naturally rectangular because they're made of a 2D grid of fibers at 90° angles to each other. The easiest (cheapest) way to make an irregular shape out of a woven fabric is to make a rectangle and cut it down.
> I can knit clothes seamlessly, right?
Knit garments usually have some amount of seaming, but yes, you have a lot of options to make irregular shapes when knitting.
However, knitting machines tend be most efficient and making rectangular fabric. They can do some amount of shaping, but the labor and cost goes up.
If you want to hand knit a garment, you can make quite complex irregular shapes with very little or no need for seaming. However, you're talking about two orders of magnitude more labor to make a garment. Few people want to pay $1,000 for a hand-knit sweater, so you're mostly limited to knitting it yourself or having a friend or loved one who likes you.
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).
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/magazine/the-year-in-idea...
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.
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! 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.
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.
> 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.
[1] https://fashionschooldaily.com/cintra-wilson-vs-jc-penney-th...
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.
(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.
> 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.
Yes, obesity is clearly an epidemic. But discounting the entire article's premise to point that out?
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.
And it's not my imagination; I have a few custom made dress shirts from Maxwell's and those absolutely do feel correct in both dimensions.
A tall medium where available will typically work for me but most brands don't have it at all and those that do it's a special order so what's even the point of being in the store; I might add well have just done a blind buy online from home.
The value proposition is comfort and they last a decade.
Never knew!
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
For women, it's very common to consume sugary coffee flavored drinks and this behavior is glamorized on social media.
For men, the problem is worse.
The fact that the particular area you live in determines so much of the probability a person would be obese suggests the location plays a huge part. While sugary drinks are marketed and popular everywhere.
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)
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.
If you put a pile of junk food on the floor, your pet will eat it until they make themselves sick.
We are smarter than many animals and have more discipline. But we are still animals and do not have unlimited executive function. The people who architect the environment of incentives that surround us bear some amount of responsibility for the behavior those incentives create.
Denying that is denying that we are living beings subject to all of the same limitations as any other mortal animal. We are not spherical rational actors in a vacuum.
This isn’t to say Starbucks is causing obesity, of course. Most likely they are showing up together as the economy develops.
I do think it is worth noting that obesity is a pretty widespread problem, not uniquely American or anything like that.
Then again, free will is an illusion, so...
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.
Crazy how a glucose drop can sneak up and humble you so quickly!
For example, Starbucks could limit the sizes it sells and advertises—you'd still be able to have as much sugar as you would like by buying multiple drinks, but it would raise the activation energy needed to do that. Making the healthier choice the path of least resistance works wonders.
Corporate welfare has to end.
It's not that all the rest of the world has sugar tax or something. It's customer profile.
[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32576300/ [1]: https://www.itiger.com/news/1184332557
So give everyone GLP-1s to cast the shadow of personality responsibility (reduction in adverse reward center operations, broadly speaking) through better brain chemistry. Existence is hard, we can twiddle the wetware to make it less hard.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
> Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) are increasingly used for type 2 diabetes and obesity treatment. Their effects on appetite and satiety are well established, but less is known about their associations with food purchases. Case reports and small observational studies suggest that GLP-1RA initiation is associated with altered preferences from highly processed, energy-dense products to minimally processed foods. We examined whether initiation of GLP-1RAs for treatment was associated with changes in nutritional quality and processing level of supermarket purchases.
> Changes in purchasing patterns after GLP-1RA initiation were seen across most nutrient categories. Opposed to comparisons, after the first prescription, participants purchased fewer calories, sugars, saturated fats, and carbohydrates, alongside modestly more protein. The share of ultraprocessed foods also decreased. Although modest at the individual level, these changes may accumulate at the population level, particularly given increasing GLP-1RA use.
This is incorrect, as demonstrated over and over again. For many people's bodies, consuming less will result in the body changing its metabolism to burn less, and not dipping into fat stores. Conversely, for many people's bodies, exercising more does not in fact change their metabolism and the amount of energy they burn. (There are studies that going from "zero" to "not zero" makes a meaningful difference, but "not zero" to "quite active" often doesn't.) "CICO" is not useful or actionable for many people.
The body has means to regulate it's energy expenditure to maintain homeostasis, and in some people it can be a hundreds of kcal difference. But if you're trying to lose body fat on a 10% estimated deficit and fail, the conclusion shouldn't be that a 20% deficit will also fail.
I'm not suggesting that it's impossible to lose weight through sufficiently large caloric restriction. I'm observing that it is not anywhere close to as simple as "CICO", because CO is heavily a function of CI, rather than the popular incorrect perception of CO being things like "exercise".
Calories in calories out is just the summation of expenditure and intake, just because the body is complex and there are many interdependent factors doesn't mean it cant be resolved to a vector which determines weight gain/loss. The problem is people google a tdee calculator, get some scalar which is likely wrong, perhaps substantially, make lifestyle changes, and then have an expectation of some result in a specific timeline that isn't realistic, and then eat a bunch of sodium, put on 2 lbs in their "deficit", and think the diet made them fatter! Or they read that -3500kcal == -1lb fat, calculate their calories burned from the machines at the gym, and get frustrated when it doesn't work (I'm guilty!).
Weight loss is actually really hard because it really just requires a sustained effort over a long period of time to achieve anything. You might not see any results for weeks as your body adjusts, you get your diet locked in, etc. And since your weight can vary so much day to day, it's hard to stay motivated. Ozempic kind of bypasses these problems. You know what else works? 20k steps a day and eating on a backpacker budget :P
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12742762/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003193842...
https://time.com/7340807/history-debate-insurance-glp-1s/
https://recursiveadaptation.com/p/the-growing-scientific-cas...
The consistency that I'm hearing from all across patient groups is gain of control, whereas previously, there was a loss of control… All of a sudden they're able to step back and say, 'oh, well I had this shopping phenomenon that was going on, gambling, addiction, or alcoholism, and all of a sudden, it just stopped,'
- Dr. Gitanjali Srivastava, Vanderbilt Medical Center
If a company put a giant a giant bollard in the middle of the interstate and someone hit it, are you saying that the company bears zero responsibility for that?
Yeah it would be better if everyone just didn't eat crap but crap is what people want.
And when you zoom out to the population level, the “we’re all autonomous individuals” argument gets a lot shakier. Like yeah, at the individual level you have agency, you make choices, fine. But at scale? We are absolutely at the mercy of whoever has figured out how to tickle our monkey brains in just the right way to get us buying their fattening food.
I walk by Starbucks every day without consuming 1500 kcal worth of Starbucks. You think that's due to their agency??
Normalize going to a tailor, instead of grumbling about how you aren't benefiting enough from the sweatshops mass retailers are running.
They're doing it because people are buying clothes based on superficial appearance, and most people prefer the aesthetics of the hourglass shape.
Rectangular clothing doesn't sell as well because it doesn't look as good on a mannequin even if it fits better.
It’s less prevalent in EU and even less so in some East Asian countries.
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 is 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-...
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.
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?
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
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.
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.")
I am a 4XL in China (or was, when I was there last) and a S in the US.
That blows my mind.
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.
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. :)
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.
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!
The schemes are ruthless and never end, and it's all arbitrary fashion. In some ways, it's a lot easier being a guy.
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.
>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?
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