alt Hacker NewsSizing chaos
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What a beautifully made website.
The issue is not the sizes, the issue is the obesity epidemic. According to CDC [1] the average woman in the US is 5'3" weighing 172lbs. That's not just overweight but rather first degree of obesity. I guess you could argue that sizes should catch up to the demands when half of your population is straight up fat but I feel like a better angle would be educating people that 1500 kcal worth of Starbucks sugar for breakfast is not healthy.
What a lovely website, and the torso silhouette sizing diagrams are invaluable.
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.
I love sites like this
As a short adult male (5'5" - 165cm), it's always been difficult to find pants or jeans with a 28" inseam. Surprisingly, AmazonBasics line of clothes is one of the few mass produced consumer brands that has this size. Niche alternatives like Peter Manning are expensive, so it's great Amazon does this.
The lede is sort of in there, but buried - or at least not talked about from an economic perspective:
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.
Almost like we should use, you know, units of length, when measuring lengths/widths/etc.
Here's an asumption:
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.
Sizing only sucks because diet and exercise habits changed since the sizes were introduced.
I hope with computers getting better at handling soft materials we could finally get fully automated tailor as a service. Mass production in clothing has so many pathologies that it needs to be replaced with something better and less wasteful asap.
Is the distribution of women waistline sizes really bimodal at some ages? That can't be good.
Hot take (?):
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. :)
Can confirm the utter hell it is to shop for women's clothing. I started transitioning at the ripe old age of 36, and up until that point, have obviously bought clothes for men. My entire fucking life I have bought XL shirts and jeans with a 38-44 inch waist, shorter legs. Never had an issue.
Womens sizes... like Jesus Christ, I don't know how ANY women tolerate this shit. It's completely made up. A size 0 in one brand feels similar to a size 3 in another, feels similar to Large in another, feels similar to -1 in another. Anything you buy and like, you effectively have to pray they keep making forever, and always buy from that brand or you risk getting something else that doesn't fit correctly.
I've never shopped a product category that feels so utterly hostile to consumer comprehension, except MAYBE microtransactions in videogames. And I'm not meaning to be dramatic, that's the only other type of market I've experienced in life where it feels like my attempts to understand what I'm buying are being deliberately frustrated like this.
The original title made clear that this was about sizing for women's clothes. I'm not sure why that was removed; it wasn't clickbaity, and made the title more informative. In fact, I'd argue that just "Sizing chaos" is more clickbaity. (The article itself doesn't seem to have an official title.)
>By age 15, most girls have gone through growth spurts and puberty, and they’ve reached their adult height.
>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?
for non-native speakers: tweenager - a child between the ages of about 10 and 14. (Oxford Languages)
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.
> I took stacks upon stacks of jeans with me to the dressing room, searching in vain for that one pair that fit perfectly. Over 20 years later, my hunt for the ideal pair of jeans continues. But now as an adult, I’m stuck with the countless ways that women’s apparel is not made for the average person, like me.
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.
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This is the first pudding article that does not feel as polished. Scrolling down the spacing between legends within the data visualizations are not good. Some text doesn't even appear (cut off from the top on the torso visualizations). My font size is increased by like 150% thru the OS but my zoom is still 100%.
Good content tho.
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As a male who has been on both ends of the spectrum (morbidly obese) and 'fit' / bodybuilder I find the whole discussion about size, clothing, weight, vanity, etc incredibly boring.
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.
Does the author know she is allowed to put down the cake and go for a jog? You'll feel better, look better, live better.
A lot of companies don't want you and your HAES friends in their clothes. The healthy, attractive women who respect their bodies and health enough to conform to regular sizing are walking billboards for their brand.
It's harsh but maybe the obese should feel a little uncomfortable in public. Evidently some are shameless and impervious to accountability for their lifestyle choices that have led them to writing blog posts self-righteously seething about other people not retooling factories to accommodate their gargantuan waistlines.
> Cultural narratives around vanity sizing often square the blame on female shoppers, not brands. Newsweek once called it “self-delusion on a mass scale” because women were more likely to buy items that were labeled as sizes smaller than reality. But there’s more to the story.
> 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?