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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.
Not just a women problem, my own jeans are 32. My workout pants are M, my work pants are size 50.
Shoes should be standardized, i have pair of converse size 39 and a pair of nike jordan’s (possibly fake, not sure got them as a gift from a friend) size 44. I’m usually a 42 or 42,5.
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.
Just buy in Temu, they put these BS sizes but there’s always a chart in cm so if you know your numbers you get it right.
Same thing when I wanted Business shirts. Where I live it’s all s m l bulshit. I went to Macy’s online and they sell most brands by 3 measures I think, can’t remember, it’s collar size, arm length in inches. Well worth the international shipping fees for a week’s worth of shirts. Now I mostly work from home, I think they’ll last until I retire lol
Always get a size up and wash them hot to shrink to you
We’re getting jackets as a christmas present from my employer and they had us fill out a size form. “Sizes are as usual.”
Made me think of this.
i am simply too impatient to buy tight or normal fitting clothing - i just buy loose M or L everything and eyeball if it should be M or L, bonus points for drawstrings but i do also own belts so anything will do.
besides, finding a well fitting pair of jeans is borderline impossible for me, because: 1. i’m a guy 2. i’m short 3. i have a big ass. those 3 combined seemingly make me a mythical creature, clothes designers don’t seem to even be capable of thinking to make jeans that’d fit me well.
jeans that fit my ass and are short enough? guess i don’t get to have pockets (because i’d need to buy in the women’s section)
guy design and big ass variant? baggy on the rest of my legs & now i need to cut them to walk
guy design & good lenghts for my legs? my ass doesn’t fit
:(
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?
Holy shit. This man jeans.
This is fascinating! thanks for the pics, it makes so much sense.
The ultimate jeans post
Even men’s jeans which are size by the actual waist and inseam measurement can be wrong.
They’re not generally sized by the actual waist measurement. I wear 33W and my pants all measure about 36" around the belt line. The “waist” measurement derives from many decades ago when men wore high-waisted pants where the waist was a few inches smaller than the circumference around the hips, where waistlines are today. Men were also generally a lot fitter back then, too!
Dickes’s work pants are always like this, horribly inconsistent. But they were cheap and they last forever so you just have to grab a pile of the same size, try them all on and buy the ones that fit. Good luck ordering online…
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.
Yeah as a trans woman it was bittersweet when my hips stopped fitting in men’s jeans. They’re sturdier with bigger pockets and way more (but not really) consistently sized.
The problem in men’s sizes is tolerances in fabric cutting as they stack more and more sheets per cut. Women’s clothes do that while also playing calvinball.
All this means rhat as a long legged skinny girl with thick thighs, biker’s calves, and an ass I’d only trade while pant shopping, pant shopping is a long pain in the ass.
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.
I really want a law that requires clothes sizes to use actual, verifiable measurements.
i know the author is only familiar with their own experiences and i don’t expect them to know the other side but this is definitely not exclusive to women’s clothes. every brand just uses their own sizes for everything from hats to pants to shoes.
Shoes are there worst. I need EE width. Some brands, the"Wide Fit" works. Others, “Extra Wide”. And that doesn’t even address how extremely difficult it is to even find wide shoes in-store nowadays.
Some woman shop for/wear “men’s” clothes, either because they shop for the men in their life, or for themselves because the standards are more sensible (even if not perfect) compared to women’s sizing. In other situations, we wear “men’s” cut clothes because it’s the default - like when a workplace gives everyone a free T-shirt. 9 times out of 10, it’s probably a cut designed for men - even if the workplace has a majority of women (as was the case when I worked in a nursing home.)
At least for pants, a lot of men’s pants sizes usually go off a band + length measurement, which is a ratio that women’s clothes don’t offer at all. T-shirts can be bad either way, but I once grabbed two (“women’s”) shirts off the same rack in a store and both fit me perfectly - one was Small, the other was Extra Large. I’ve never seen that bad of a difference when trying on “men’s” clothes, and that’s part of why I prefer to buy from the men’s section. It’s more sensible.
So yeah, vanity sizing hurts everyone. But unless you do shop for both men’s and women’s clothes, it’s hard to appreciate just how awful vanity sizing is for women in particular.
“outside straight sizes” wat? they have gay sizes too?
Shopping for trousers as a fat kid before elastic waistbands became mainstream on “regular” clothes was an extended humiliation. “The waist is too tight! the legs are too long!” No, I’m just fucking deformed because I’m fat.
I used to be a “husky” kid. Now I have the opposite problem - so difficult to find 34x34 in thrift shops/marketplace. Seems everyone my height has more waistline than inseam.
I’d smarm it up with “what’s wrong with a belt/bracers” but having lost weight (then regained it) the amount of folding over that can happen for trousers that are for people much bigger than you can be quite uncomfortable
I knew it! I’m not crazy!
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.
Back in the day you’d get a pair of jeans and they’d tailor it to your needs. If it was high quality materials I’d pay 200€ for a pair. Much cheaper than 5 x 60-80€ for bad / low quality crap.
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
