Technology and fashion

SOme companies that sell men's custom size and fitted shirts simply use a few simple measurements from the customers as a solution.
I see this as a great tool, especially for the retailers, to avoid returns.
This technology has been a round for a while but is now becoming more user friendly and gets better everyday.

SOme companies that sell men's custom size and fitted shirts simply use a few simple measurements from the customers as a solution.
I see this as a great tool, especially for the retailers, to avoid returns.
This technology has been a round for a while but is now becoming more user friendly and gets better everyday.

Check UK based startup Me_tail - metail.co.uk, pretty interesting related stuff.

You know what else is interesting? Check out the range of available sizes in the high street stores - look at the range of the y-axis in the US compared to the UK stores. The UK high street stores carry a much wider range of sizes overall in the stores than do the US shops! By which I particularly mean at the larger end (where I am, as a classic small-waisted pear-shaped person). This is empirical evidence which confirms exactly what I have experienced, having lived both in the UK and in the US for long periods of time. The US high street stores only carry a range of sizes meant for skinnier people in store - larger women are relegated to only online shopping from many retailers because they don't carry the US 'size 16-18s or women's' sizes in the store. Which is insane because some of the largest variation in fit is when you get into the larger sizes and also the border area between 'misses' and 'women's' (sometimes I fit one, sometimes the other!) Whereas in the UK there were always relatively higher end and middling high street chains where I could walk in and buy stuff off the rack that fit. This is extra ironic given that the average weight of all people in the US is so much larger than the UK - there are way more larger sized women here, yet those women are relegated to in-store shopping only at Lane Bryant or Walmart/Target because the regular mall stores only carry sizes best suited for teens and college students!

"For now Ms Powell-Smith's website caters only to the fairer sex."

This is sex discrimination :-)

I'm afraid, CF, you've taken the easy answer as given. Yes, sizes differ. Yes, some of that is to make women feel better about their size and some reflects bigger people. But the main cause is elsewhere. It is that women's bodies have great variability: bust, hips, waist, leg length, even the location of the waist, all differ dramatically from woman to woman. Now combine that with women's fashion versus men's: men wear basic trousers and shirts that either billow or stretch. They wear suits which cover bellies. Women wear tighter clothes designed to emphasize body parts. These clothes are fitted to the woman's body, which means tremendous variabilty - and a large market for tailoring because the seat may fit but the legs won't or vice versa. That we think of regular women's sizes shows how little we understand about what we see every day. Women don't wear burkhas in the West so we should be able to tell their bodies vary a lot and their clothes options also vary much more than men. I can look around where I'm sitting: some guys in basic guy clothes of sweaters and pants and women wearing a wide variety of clothes. That's the real issue and the solution has never been to imagine there's a woman's size.

The Elephant in the Room is the Epidemic of Obesity, now claiming up to 50-60% of a Western Populace.
We ARE the Elephant in the Room.

Technology CAN provide a solution: Every waistband, bra or article of clothing should be made with Space-Age Spandex.

Spandex is the Zip-Up Polyester Jumpsuit of Today.

(And 'Exercise' is the new four letter word.)

How interesting that the companies are now feeling the pain from their "vanity sizing". Maybe they'll find a way to standardize, all in the name of cost reductions. The buying public, however will not be happy when that happens and they find that they've actually been one or two sizes larger than they thought.
I find now as sizes are ballooning that I am having to shift down in sizes (used to be XLarge, now mostly Large.) I don't think that I'm shrinking, but it sure looks like it in my closet.
I can't for the life of me understand how buying shoes online can work. Fit is maybe the top or second most important piece of buying shoes. But then again I'm a man.

What I (a man) finds the most maddening about clothes sizing is that different manufacturers have wildly different ideas about the length of units like inches and centimetres. Two pair of jeans with the same nominal waist and inseam lengths can be wildly different sizes.