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.

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!

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)

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 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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The of the only reasons I've been wearing the same pants is because I haven't found anything else that fits well

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.

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

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.

[1] https://fashionschooldaily.com/cintra-wilson-vs-jc-penney-th...

[2] https://archive.is/md8qw

I wish they simply measured clothing in centimeters, and all the complexity could be left behind.

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...).

Wait, I buy my pants with a waist and length size. So the problem is already solved?

(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.

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

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.

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/FVQVTA-freesewing/

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)

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm

> 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.

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.

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.

>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?

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. :)

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.

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.