They're literally conspiring against you
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I know this is a problem, as I see my wife deal with it frequently.
But understand that men's sizes aren't consistent either. I have a 32" waist...maybe. Some jeans and shorts fit me perfectly, some are way too tight, and some are way too loose. Even within the same brand and product. The jeans I have on today are pretty good for fit. A different pair of jeans I was wearing a few days ago required regular adjustments to keep from falling down. My weight hasn't varied THAT much.
The situation for men isn't as bad as women's sizes, though. I'd love to know how they think they can compress all of the different measurements a woman's body can have into a single number. At least they haven't tried that with men - for example, pants are waist and inseam length, so you can usually get what you need, or at least pretty close (notwithstanding the above issue). If they condensed that into one number, I have no idea how that would work.
There's a slightly better balance with consistency for men's clothes because styles and patterns don't need to change as frequently.
That being said, it varies by brand and varies more when the brand is lower quality. Old Navy clothes might as well be sized "No way," "I dunno," "maybe, well, no," and "Woah, way too big." But something higher end like BR will be consistent with themselves on things like jeans that rarely change. All the people in some sweatshop in Bangladesh have the patterns down doing the same thing for years.
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As a guy I feel this for shirts specifically, sometimes I have to wear an XL sometimes it's a L and once in a blue moon I can wear a M. Why you may ask? Because for some fucking reason damned near every shirt assumes medium means 5'7 twink with a shoulder width smaller than my chest width, I'm 5'5 barrel chested and with wide shoulders where sometimes I can't wear a shirt cause I am forced to A pose by the shoulders. Also I can sometimes rip medium sized shirts assunder if I flex my back right.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Same. The more-standardized sizes in men's clothing means I just have to resign myself to the fact that I need to buy size M, size L, or size XL depending on the brand, and that it still will never fit right. This is why the majority of my shirts are short-sleeved, even in winter.
I've recently met several men who got into sewing as a result.
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Shoes. Bought a pair of Bass shoes from the Bass online store. The shoes that arrived were completely different from the ones I ordered. The picture on the shoebox were what I wanted, but not what was in the box. Explained the issue and returned the shoes. The replacement shoes were exactly the same. I returned and gave up.
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Same. The more-standardized sizes in men's clothing means I just have to resign myself to the fact that I need to buy size M, size L, or size XL depending on the brand, and that it still will never fit right. This is why the majority of my shirts are short-sleeved, even in winter.
I've recently met several men who got into sewing as a result.
I am lucky that it is just a sowing thing for me and I don't mind wearing a shirt so long that it's more comparable to a classical kilt.
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Length and width ought not be yoked like that, an XL shouldn't be longer, just wider. You need Short, Medium, and Tall and Extra Tall for that dimension.
I was a tall and skinny kid and the heartbreak of never having pants long enough, because the small ones were all also very short, still I feel it!
As an adult, the first time I saw a ladies size Small Tall in the shop I almost cried.
Women's bra sizes also suck, because the volume of the cups is tied to the diameter of the half circle the underwire describes, but small boobs aren't small in width, they just sit closer. Champagne glass, but small bras assume shot glass instead, basically. They need three measurements.
Women's bra sizes also suck
Shopping with my wife for bras is... Fun. Cups can be anywhere from a DDD to a I, bands from a 38 to a 46.
Somehow this makes sense somewhere.
She punched me when I sat a bra on my head and said 'try this one,' but I was right!
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I just want to see more women's clothes with pockets.
I don't understand why women say this, then buy clothes without pockets (or without useful pockets).
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If anyone is down for a fascinating video essay about this by a textile historian: Standardized Sizes Ruined our Clothing Quality
Have you ever wondered how we let clothing quality get so bad? It wasn't just desperation for cheaper options- the 18th century consumer would never have been willing to pay so much for such poor quality cloth. And yet, they stayed clothed. Even their cheaper options lasting years of hard wear. But they knew what quality looked like and for the most part, we don't.
When did we forget how to shop for good clothing rather than just trendy? What makes clothing "high quality" is so complex and nearly impossible to track with online shopping. Even in person, it's not a simple answer. But it used to be that more money meant more quality, plain and simple. Where did we mess up this system? Turns out, standardized sizing allowed (and even encouraged) far more than just issues with poor fit and body image.
My guess is that's more about fashion than not knowing how to buy good quality things.
In ye olde days, like the 1950s, jeans were jeans, and a pair that lasted years was great. Then in the 1980s trends started emerging like stone washed jeans, or acid washed jeans. Then there were the boot cut, tapered leg, loose cut, baggy, bell-bottom, and all kinds of other trendy cuts.
What's the point in buying a $200 pair of jeans that will last decades if they'll be out of fashion in 5 years?
High quality clothing is still out there, but it's not fashion clothing, it's work clothes. If you go to a store that caters to construction workers, factory workers, or other people who have to wear durable clothes as part of their job, you can still get stuff that lasts a very long time.
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I don't understand why women say this, then buy clothes without pockets (or without useful pockets).
Because often the options are non existant
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No one's mentioned bras and how they are significantly worse? Lets make arbitrary cup and band sizes, but then add in how each bra has a different shape and projection even in the same brand. Are you full on top, full on bottom, average, shallow? What about root width and height? Well you won't know if any bra will fit until you try, even changing cup and band sizes won't make a bra not made for your shape fit properly. Each brand does their own different sizing even in each bra, each global country has their own sizing system, and it is madness.
The whole "cup size" thing is so weird. Even the name "cup" makes it sound like it's based on volume, but it's not. It's the difference between a measuring tape wrapped at boob height vs a measuring tape wrapped just below the boobs. This means that a 36A and a 28E might have the same volume of breast tissue but wildly different "cup sizes". It really seems like the whole thing would be a lot easier to manage if there were just a "breast volume" measurement and a "band length" measurement.
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Okay, thats fair, but it's way less fun to say 'corporatized and taylorized'
Ha, my point was more that the bandsaw wasn't tracking straight so all the blanks on the bottom are bigger, the seamstress runs a hem 10mm (more or less) from the edge so the dimension remains out and the QA guy couldn't give a fuck because it's 8:30 on a Friday night and he's been working 21 days straight.
Even the same garment is going to have a different size in different countries, large in Italy, medium in UK etc etc. the real size is somewhere in between, but no one makes that level of granularity.
You should watch some of these garments being made, it's mind blowing.
Cutting blanks and this is a tame/slow process Vs some other factories I've seen on the tube.
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where it ends up making the clothes fit poorly
a.k.a makes the clothes fit anything but skin-tight because the pockets need space so the clothes have to be wider-cut
That seems like an oversimplification, outside looking in for me, but there's no way a single dimension could ever adequately describe an item of clothing - my sister and wife have similar sized waists, but something tight round the posterior on my wife would be baggy on my sister.
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And then imagine how it feels like to shop for clothes if your body doesn't even conform to the expected average norms.
I god damn hate it. Stuff is either too wide or too short, the sleeves are NEVER long enough, the only available shoes that fit and don't feel like torture are jogging shoes or sneakers, the neck width is never sufficient (unless you buy men's clothes, which will look like a tent because tits weren't part of the equasion)…
Uuugh, I hate shopping for clothes. -.-
You might want to look into barefoot shoes. They're designed to have a really thin sole so you're basically walking barefoot. I had trouble finding shoes that fit until I switched. It also just feels good to be actually using my feet "properly". Instead of relying on the shoe to bend in certain ways, it's my foot and the muscles in my foot that are doing the work.
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We all know that the rich wear personally tailored suits and so-on. But, what I think would be amazing is to be rich enough to wear a personally tailored t-shirt, or personally tailored socks. For women, I can't imagine the joy of having a personally tailored bra that was built precisely to fit their exact body. That must exist at some level of wealth, but I just wonder how rich you have to be to justify that kind of spending.
For most people, even when you find something that fits well, there are going to be compromises, like the shoulders might fit perfectly, but it's just a bit too long, or a bit too tight. But, just imagine something simple like a T-shirt where instead of "medium" you get something that takes into account your torso's length, your ribcage's size, your shoulder's width, your arm's circumference, the size of your neck, and so-on.
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I know this is a problem, as I see my wife deal with it frequently.
But understand that men's sizes aren't consistent either. I have a 32" waist...maybe. Some jeans and shorts fit me perfectly, some are way too tight, and some are way too loose. Even within the same brand and product. The jeans I have on today are pretty good for fit. A different pair of jeans I was wearing a few days ago required regular adjustments to keep from falling down. My weight hasn't varied THAT much.
The situation for men isn't as bad as women's sizes, though. I'd love to know how they think they can compress all of the different measurements a woman's body can have into a single number. At least they haven't tried that with men - for example, pants are waist and inseam length, so you can usually get what you need, or at least pretty close (notwithstanding the above issue). If they condensed that into one number, I have no idea how that would work.
I'm a size M guy, everything from head to toe is M. If M doesn't fit, I will try S, but most of the time that is too small, so I just skip that fit or brand. Sometimes the size difference is so ridiculous it might as well be two different shirts. One time I tried a polo in M and it looked like an oversized 90s hip‑hop shirt on me so I tried the S and it was so tight it looked like swimwear lol.
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It's less extreme but men's clothing is like this too. I found a cut of jeans I liked in a store then ordered 4 mor pairs in different colors. None fit the same and 2 were unwearable.
I did the same! It was not jeans but pants that is supposed to look like they are a bit more formal but are more comfortable. From the website did I just pick 3 different colors of the same size but they all fit so differently, and one pair had much thicker fabric, felt more like they went "close enough" and called it a day lol
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At this point I'm wondering if the designers just roll dice and put the result on the label.
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Always get a size up and wash them hot to shrink to you
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Ha, my point was more that the bandsaw wasn't tracking straight so all the blanks on the bottom are bigger, the seamstress runs a hem 10mm (more or less) from the edge so the dimension remains out and the QA guy couldn't give a fuck because it's 8:30 on a Friday night and he's been working 21 days straight.
Even the same garment is going to have a different size in different countries, large in Italy, medium in UK etc etc. the real size is somewhere in between, but no one makes that level of granularity.
You should watch some of these garments being made, it's mind blowing.
Cutting blanks and this is a tame/slow process Vs some other factories I've seen on the tube.
See, regional differences that i can fix with a conversion chart im fine with. That's just more sizes. As long as they're printed.
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We all know that the rich wear personally tailored suits and so-on. But, what I think would be amazing is to be rich enough to wear a personally tailored t-shirt, or personally tailored socks. For women, I can't imagine the joy of having a personally tailored bra that was built precisely to fit their exact body. That must exist at some level of wealth, but I just wonder how rich you have to be to justify that kind of spending.
For most people, even when you find something that fits well, there are going to be compromises, like the shoulders might fit perfectly, but it's just a bit too long, or a bit too tight. But, just imagine something simple like a T-shirt where instead of "medium" you get something that takes into account your torso's length, your ribcage's size, your shoulder's width, your arm's circumference, the size of your neck, and so-on.
Tailors are pretty affordable. Anyone can take clothes into a tailor and get them tailored to their body shape. Idk if bras are able to be adjusted though.
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This isn't just a problem with women's jeans which have arbitrary size numbers. Even men's jeans which are size by the actual waist and inseam measurement can be wrong. In addition to vanity sizing, cheaper jeans are also made from larger material cuts out of the patterns at the same time to save manufacturing cost sometimes twice as many as shown here:
Those at the top or bottom of the stack may end up a bit smaller or a bit larger than the pattern, but they all get marked with the same size.
Whether it was this manufacturing problem or vanity sizing, this is why I stopped buying Old Navy jeans. I could pick out 3 jeans all labeled with the same size and one would fit okay, one would be too small, and one too large. I have never had this problem with Eddie Bauer jeans.
Edit: I found picture showing the larger stacks (which can introduce the mismatched sizing) I was referring to:
Is that then called a jeack?
