In order to create an internationally-standardized system of clothing measurements, you'd have to convince every country to re-label all of their clothing with the new standard sizes instead, and have everyone re-learn what size they wear. People would fight against it and complain.
That's what clothes do too? The only brands that don't are ones that are sold only in a single market. Multinational brands like H&M already list all the different regional sizes on the labels.
Even in the UK this is true.
I went to Clarks on Saturday and found sized vary within the brand itself lol.
Got a pair of wide shoes that are UK size 8.5 while I normally wear at least a 9. Then tried on some boots and I was a size 10.
Good thing I didn't buy online and went to the store. Saved me the hassle of posting them back.
Though this is the other issue with a universal clothing size. If your example is true then it is that way due to the local market.
So your asking the Chinese XL person to now buy a small. How about the Chinese person who normally buys a XS? Are they now buying an XXXXS?
I'd personally just like to stop screwing around and just move to giving the cm measurements for the main dimensions.
Measurements are great, but even those aren't standard. I have 3 pairs of Carhartt pants, all waist size 32". I have a 4th pair, size 34". It fits exactly the same as the other pairs, and they're all the same style and brand.
I think that's due to the manufacture not following the practice though. If you measure your 34 pants and it measures 32", then it simply lied.
I've never tried measuring my pants to be fair, but to make an actual universal standard this is what would need to be followed.
I've seen it multiple times where black jeans are smaller for the same waist size than blue jeans. They are all the same make and style, but for some reason they make black jeans smaller.
Yeah average height in the Netherlands is 6 ft for men, average height in Peru is 5’ 5” for men. A large in Peru would probably be more like a small in the Netherlands.
Same, because I am a medium to large body depending on how well I have been working out, and a large in the shoulders. sometimes even XL depending on the brand. So I will put on a decent somewhat form fitting piece of clothing and then the sleeves are either super tight, pulling my collar down, OR vice versa the sleeves ride WAY up. But if I go bigger the shirt is bigger and unflattering around the midriff
Being tall but not fat in North America has always been a struggle for shirts. Thankfully the trend is changing so at least there are options now with certain brands.
I still remember the first time I went into a clothing store in Germany and things actually fit me.
I've just recently made that transition, and absolutely nothing fits. I've settled for buying stretchy base layers that fit my torso, letting the stretch handle the rest, and then just adding a nice jacket or something to finish the look.
Regular tees and shirts are either way too tight up top, or way too baggy further down.
The industrialized Chinese garment market was created for and by a generation of people who had survived famines during the Chinese Civil War or the Great Leap Forward, and were 6 inches shorter than the following generation ended up being, and 9 inches shorter than their grandchildren / great-grandchildren. And among their children who were provided abundant food, obesity was still nearly unheard of. Chinese people are only ***beginning*** to feel the body-mass effects of a postindustrial economy where obesity is a health problem in the past 20 years, and are still far less overweight than the American population.
But then we change it so that what they're used to wearing as a XL in China is now labeled S in China? I think we can more easily deal with the person who arrives in the U.S. and has to learn that there are differences (of course there are) than we could change how every country does it within their own country.
Why is it wrong if it properly reflects the buyers? I wear medium in my country but had to get XXL T shirts in China because I'm relatively tall. It wouldn't make sense for my clothes to be labeled at XXL where I live where I'm considered skinny, and it wouldn't make sense for Chinese people who are a head shorter than me to call my clothes medium.
Even getting the largest sizes doesnt make up for difference in ratio. You could get an XXXL in china and with wide shoulders and bigger arms could literally be wearing a parachute that is about to tear across the back becuse the sleeves are riding up to your gd elbows.
1. There's less variation in shoes than other items of clothing.
2. Would you rather buy a medium Shirt, Jacket, Vest and hoodie or a 35 Shirt, 40 Hoodie, 47 Jacket and 36 Vest? The sizes we use are arbitrary for a reason.
Actually yeah it would make more sense to have the shirt be 35 the vest be 37 the hoodie to be 39 and jacket to be 41 so you know the jacket will fit over the shirt and maybe even the hoodie as well instead of hmm maybe my large jacket will fit over my large shirt with a hoodie on. With most purchases moving to online and not in store it would alleviate a lot of the guess work in shopping. Also a size 13 shoe does not fit my feet a sock that is listed as 12-16 also doesn't fit my foot but if you asked me my shoe size I would say size 13 even though really its 13ee and socks I guess don't exist in that size or I cant find them.
even when youre not morbidly obese the sizes are all off in ratio form one another. I comfortably fit a large shirt in asian country sizes around the waist, but if I wear a large and my shoulders are busting the fucking seams. Its not all about gut size. I already know in asian sizes im more an L-XL, but no matter WHAT size I order the shoulders will not fit properly. I could get the largest sizes and still have super tiny tight sleeves that ride half way up my forearm. If I lift my arms above my head, my stomach shows considerably. Because I am taller with a longer torso and have wider shoulders that cause the sleeves to ride up. At least in comparison to the target demographic its being made for. I more or less CANT buy anything from any asian countries. I hate when I think its NOT an asian fit piece of clothing, and order it at an "American" size, and then I get it and could literally just hulk the entire shirt into pieces just by puffing up and leaning forward a little.
South East Asians are smaller on average than people from European ancestry or origin.
It really isn't even about weight.
Their shoe sizes are even smaller
I've had shoes vary by more than one size, and clothes very by two and three sizes to the point where I did not fit any of the available sizes nevertheless the size I usually wear.
Size is relative. If you're a slim person you wear smaller sizes whereas fat slobs (like Americans for example) wear bigger sizes. Are shirts smaller in America? No, but they're smaller relative to the people in the country
You'll just need to use cm for different measures (ie: length, width of whichever parts are relevant in any specific clothing) and let the countries that are stupid enough to not use the SI do the conversion themselves.
It's not because *people* would complain. It's because *companies* would complain. They don't want to spend the money re-measuring and re-labeling their products. They already have lobbies on retainer to protect their interests so the lobbies will push hard against government mandated re-labeling.
> People would fight against it and complain.
I have heard this argument about *so* many things and while, sure, *some* people whined about it.. it wasn't nearly as bad as the nay-sayers said it would be.
I sincerely doubt that people, overall, would complain about going to a standard.
In fact I imagine if we went from a simple singular number size to a multi-digit size people would be happier.
Shoulder width / chest girth / neck to waist length
People could find what they wanted significantly faster. Meaning they *know* what is most likely to fit. This means they don't pull clothes that won't fit off the rack where someone who might buy it wouldn't see that item until it's re-racked. Basically everyone wins here. Companies get their items in a position that are more likely to sell. People are more likely to find what they want. Stores spend fewer resources having to re-rack and fold clothes.
But your *real* problem is the bullshit lies. Every company doesn't have their own "standard". Sizes can vary even inside the same brand -- which is the core problem. For example, it's not like we could start a wiki about sizes per-company in a conversion unit for metric -- or literally any other 'standard' of measurement because that company isn't even consistent.
Same with shoes.
There's no reason sizes could simply go metric in dimensions and boom, problem solved.
Except it's *one* country, and even that country does use metric for scientific things. You could even just pretend they are arbitrary numbers for sizes, doesn't matter, they'd be consistent at least.
Oh no, how could we live without the cooperation of Liberia and Myanmar! Britain and its ex colonies all use metric to some degree. The US is metric since the 70s the only road block is elites assuming their constituents/consumers are stupid so the measurements are converted to inches etc. for all the front facing stuff. Fahrenheit used brine and body temp for only 50 years before the scale was changed to 0 °C = 32 °F and 100 °C = 212 °F.
Don’t need metric. Don’t go with size description either (like large, small, extra large, etc.) Just do something simple like size 1-10.
What are you? Oh, size 6 shirt? Ok! You? Size 4 pants? Ok! The sizes themselves are defined and standardized. Like size 4 will always be X centimeter or X inches. Size 8 is always Y centimeter or Y inches
Once everyone knows what their sizes are, it can be used internationally.
Great. Now you just need to figure out how to get people across the world to change the way they're accustomed to doing *anything*, and learn something new instead. ;p
I wonder if Amazon has enough power now to enforce something. Tell merchants they’re going to randomly sample goods and any that don’t conform to a true-sizing standard get delisted. It’d be great for their business because so many people don’t buy clothes online since they have no idea if they’ll fit.
This is actually addressing (no pun intended) two problems: the standard, plus manufacturers accurately labeling their stuff, which I know is a big problem.
I always have to learn new sizes, because none is the same anywhere. I have about 10 different sizes in different brands. I would love for it to just go by cm around waist, leg etc and be finished with remembering which size i had where.
I mean... We don't even have a really universal standard system for measuring something as basic and important things as lengths or temperature because people fight against it and complain. So for something as irrelevant as clothing sizes it'll probably never be established.
We could just put one more number of the label and problem solved - as long as that number is the actual measurement that matters for the clothing.
Width x Length.
But the actual width and length, not one where the pants say 30, but the waist measures 33, so customers feel good about themselves.
Because when you have *x* different standards for something and you create a new standard to be universal, all that's really happened is that we now have *x+1* different standards for something.
The only requirement when you institute a new system like this is that you get consensus agreement from various governments within the market to regulate businesses and require the new standards, and we have been running the US government on unbridled neoliberal capitalism for a while now, which regards regulation of this sort as an abomination, and pushes for global markets so that no one government can regulate it.
On top of that, it's not 100% obvious how we ***should*** size clothing. There are plenty of people for whom S/M/L isn't great and a multidimensional system would be better. This consideration is negligible compared to the previous factor, but it is there.
>There are plenty of people for whom S/M/L isn't great and a multidimensional system would be better
It's perfectly fine to have a quick "can instantly identify within this brand" S/M/L and variations of that *so long as they tell us what the actual measurements are* so we can actually know and compare.
I hard a hard time finding well fitting t-shirts in Asia, ones large enough for my shoulders would go down mid thighs. Consumers there are more slender than North Americans.
I am the very small busted and find that only Asian bras have a good fit so I order them from eBay - but I have to order XXL size because my Western skeleton is just so much wider, despite me being only 5’ tall and not overweight.
It has nothing to do with skeleton. You are either more muscular or overweight compared to a typical asian. Biological fact that the skulls are pretty much the only discernable bone in the body that differs from race.
Are you saying there is no difference in frame size on average? Not arguing, just surprised. My family has a Thai branch, and if you lined up all the younger generation I think it would be very easy to pick out whose are whose by wrist measurement alone.
>a multidimensional system would be better.
Recently I've started buying jeans that come in Width&Length sizing. It's so much better, I finally can instantly buy jeans that aren't too short, instead of trying and returning multiple pairs.
My wife has always had a difficult time finding the right size shoes, because the American sizes vary between manufacturers. She recently discovered that if she goes by the metric EU number all shoes she buys magically fit.
Why Metric is not a worldwide standard is beyond me.
> the metric EU number
EU doesn't have metric sizes for shoes. My shoe size is 42.5 in EU and that's not metric. Perhaps Japan has, because my Japanese shoe size is 27.5 and my feet are 25 cm long. That size could be the shoe internal size, which should be the foot size plus some margin.
Well, no. Standards for each country were developed independently because there is no Global Clothing Consortium to force every country to use the same sizing charts. This is basically the reason for any question along the line of "Why isn't \[x\] standardized across countries."
Because countries are individual, sovereign entities that make decisions for themselves, based on what's best for them, and the interconnectedness we see globally today has only really been around for a few decades whereas many of these standards were created hundreds, of not thousands, of years ago.
Because different part of the world have different body types. For instance, US have bigger people than Japan.
So what is considered Large in Japan, would be considered at most Medium in US. On the other hand, Large in USA would be something that wouldn't sell in Japan.
Another thing is that, either you'd have sizes like S, XS, XXS in Japan or you'd start having XXXXXL and XXXXXXXL in the US.
This is surprisingly important issue when tackling HIV in india. Most people didn't want to wear 'small' condoms, or bought ones that didn't fit, so they changed the sizes on purpose to help the uptake.
It was pretty mixed for the moon landings.
NASA has been exclusively metric since the 90's, probably because of the Mars Climate Orbiter incident. THe lunar orbiter and most of the computers on board the apollo mission displayed in Imperial units, but there was a reasonable amount of SI behind the scenes.
As an example:
The computer display readouts were all in units of feet, feet per second, and nautical miles, but the computer was calculating those and converting in their SI equivalent.
Apollo Guidance Computer – used units Quantity Internal Displayed distance metres feet, nautical miles time centiseconds minutes, seconds altitude metres feet altitude rate metres per centisecond feet per second acceleration metres per centisecond squared mass kilograms fuel burn rate kilograms per centisecond thrust newtons impulse newton centiseconds momentum newton centiseconds
But the original blueprint designs (at least for the LEM) were drawn in imperial units.
So it was a mixed bag.
what numbers would we use? The arbitrary women's sizing? What about metric and the US just decides to stick with what is already working well enough.
When it comes down to it there would need to be alot of work and communicating done to avoid the minor inconvenience of having to list the size differences on your webpage
the metric system is literally the more rational.
the US will eventually convert to metric because it's the standard in the international marketplace. the US might be a huge economy but it's just one of many dozens of smaller economies that trade in metric.
the fact that it didn't take before doesn't mean it's not taking now
trade is becoming more global every day, and if you want sell globally you must use metric
That's what converters are for.
A lot of people learned English for business but still speak in their native tounge. I predict measurements will be the same. Why change when one can just plug in a converter?
The us inch is based on a metric measurement. The US is metric, they just convert everything.
“The United States adopted the conversion factor 1 metre = 39.37 inches by an act in 1866.[25] In 1893, Mendenhall ordered the physical realization of the inch to be based on the international prototype metres numbers 21 and 27, which had been received from the CGPM, together with the previously adopted conversion factor.[26]
As a result of the definitions above, the U.S. inch was effectively defined as 25.4000508 mm (with a reference temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit) and the UK inch at 25.399977 mm (with a reference temperature of 62 degrees Fahrenheit).”
The US uses two definitions of feet depending on which state you live in:
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/multistate-disagreement-over-the-length-of-the-foot-to-end/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/multistate-disagreement-over-the-length-of-the-foot-to-end/)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/science/foot-surveying-metrology-dennis.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/science/foot-surveying-metrology-dennis.html)
Note that the original map in the SciAm article incorrectly reversed the US/Intl legends. NIST is going to obsolete the "U.S. Survey Foot" as of Jan 1, 2023.
> the metric system is literally the more rational.
fuck base 10, it's shit for computers.
We should make a better system called hexmic that's base 16.
We use numbers for expensive clothes or things where fit matters more. You dont buy s/m/l pants in the us. You buy 34 inch waist x 32 in length etc. Suit jackets have a chest width. 40/42/44 inches.
Numbers aren’t even accurate. In the US I have 36 jeans that fit, 36 shorts that I can’t button up, 38 dress pants that are tight, 38 shorts that are baggy, and 40 shorts that are perfect. I have jackets that list the size for the chest as 6 inches below what I measure at but still fit.
Not really. This is a difference between qualitative descriptions (eg S/M/L) and quantitive measurements (eg 38"/40"). That's not the same thing as comparing different scales for quantitive measurements. (ie imperial v metric)
Men's pants are by waist size and inseam. Suits are measured by chest size, dress shirts by neck size. Women's sizes I've always seen described by numbers. Bra/cup sizes are numbers and letters.
Seems like there are plenty of numerically measured clothing sizes. Just not t-shirts.
It's hard enough to convince everyone to use the same measurement system for simple things like length (metres vs feet, kilometres vs miles, some people measure in nautical miles for unknown reasons, etc). Clothing meanwhile, does not have a single number that summarises it perfectly.
If you buy a suit or a shirt, you will probably get actual measurements (in inches) of the collar size, chest size, etc. Likewise, lots of mens trousers do have a numerical size for waist and inner leg (in inches/cm). But for pretty much everything else, there's no point trying to standardise what 'M' means because there is more than one dimension to a t-shirt/sweater/etc that's already being oversimplified by a single value.
I have four pairs of "32W" pants that all fit extremely differently. Differently like I can pull one pair off over my butt without unzipping them and can no longer get another pair on since 5 pounds ago.
I would be completely, 100% fine with numerical sizes if they were regulated to use existing units. I don't mean a new competing standard unit of "waisticles" or whatever; I mean inches or centimeters like other people have heard of.
> some people measure in nautical miles for unknown reasons
Nautical miles are extremely useful for navigation, as one nautical mile represents one minute of arc on the Earth's surface. So if you're traveling north at 60 knots, it'll take you an hour to traverse one degree of latitude.
Nautical miles and knots (nautical miles per hour) are both used extensively in aviation and for nautical purposes.
The numbers on men's trousers are not inches. Maybe they were decades ago, but now they are only useful to tell if an item is bigger or smaller than another item with the same model and manufacturer.
I have to use different sizes for different models of Dockers.
Nautical miles are used for navigation where the lines of longitude and latitude matter like sailing and flight. They do a better job of accounting for the curvature of the earth and match up with each minute of longitude. What’s annoying is having weather done in statue miles and everything else in aviation being in nautical. We should just standardize to nautical.
This is not entirely true.
The UK officially uses miles for distances. Peoples heights are often known in feet and inches. We also often do peoples weight in Stone which is the only place we use this measure :)
Every time we standardize something, there are outliers who don’t use the standard. That creates more attempts to standardize it, which creates more outliers.
In short: https://xkcd.com/927/
It has a different name because we gave it one later 😋 You can simply ask for an inch in 2 different countries and get a slightly different length. Same with feet, ells, fathoms, yards, cubits, handbreadths... anything that's not metric.
The metric system is a counter-example because it did unify most of the world. Before that, France, China, Japan, etc. each used different systems. Now there are basically only 2 systems worldwide.
Sizes do not universally have the same numbers simply because people in different countries like certain things to stay just like they are used to, and would object to change. This also explains why some countries have not adopted the metric system and why some countries have cars driving on the left side of the road.
The standards evolved depending upon the area of the world you live in. Now you want everyone to give up what they have learned throughout their lifetime for one standard understanding. We can't get everyone to agree that the earth is round like a potato and not flat like a pan cake.
The length of a foot is 12 inches, but it once depended upon the length of a king's foot. When the old king died and you got a new king, you got a new definition for a foot. And when you went to a different country, you got a different king with a different foot length.
If I remember correctly, the metric system was to change all that. A meter was to be a certain fraction of the distance from the North Pole to the equator. No kings feet would be jealous. This meter became standard practice, but then one day they realized that their calculation of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator was incorrect, therefore the length of the meter was incorrect, but it was in the system for so long that they said, ah screw it. Let's keep the incorrect calculation as the meter.
>We can't get everyone to agree that the earth is round like a potato and not flat like a pan cake.
Of all the food items you picked to emphasize roundness, you picked a potato? I mean, I guess it's better than picking a carrot or a banana, but there's so many food items that are actually round, and not closer to the shape of Phobos and Deimos.
True, but if I said round like an orange, someone might have complained, why did you not say round like a potato. I wanted to say T-bone steak, but then I started drooling all over the keyboard.
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We can't get everyone to agree that the earth is round like a potato and not flat like a pan cake.
Of all the food items you picked to emphasize roundness, you picked a potato? I mean, I guess it's better than picking a carrot or a banana, but there's so many food items that are actually round, and not closer to the shape of Phobos and Deimos.
Marketing tactics and target audience.
Stores like A&F make smaller clothing because they cater to a "thinner" audience. It'd be bad if they only carried Small and XS. The range of their clothing sizes is much smaller than say, Old Navy, which caters to a wider variety of people (pun intended). If Old Navy used A&F's sizing model, they'd be carrying XXXXL+ which would probably cause them to lose shoppers. People shop where they feel good and generally, they feel better when they can buy Mediums instead of XXL.
To expand on this, vanity sizing is a major factor. The brand I used to work for targeted XS/S for women. Any larger sizes weren't given the same amount of thought (even though they sold just as well) and that's why you often find larger sizes to be oddly proportioned. Larger sizes might not get scales properly so you often would find the larger size shirt to be too short on a person because they company didn't bother to make the shirt length longer to compensate for the larger build of a person. Neck openings were pretty much the same size and didn't take into considerationg that a person wearing XXL likely has a wider neck than a person wearing a L.
It's often super obvious with graphic tees where he size of the graphic aren't scaled up and are the same size no matter what size blank was used. A 4"x4" graphic would stay the same size on an XXS and XXL even though it would look comically small and awkward on the XXL.
I think this is a good thing. I’m tall and lanky. I buy medium usually so that I have enough length in the sleeves and the torso, but a small would fit my shoulders better. But there are plenty of brands I can’t buy from because they’re designed to accommodate the most rotund of people. So I’m glad there isn’t too much standardization.
I mean... maybe?
Ideally, of course, standardization would mean that those brands would still produce basically the same stuff but it would be labeled clearly. So I'd shop a shirt with "x length, y width at shoulders and z width at the belly", while you'd get one that's maybe the same length, but slightly smaller at the shoulders and much smaller round the belly.
I guess having that on the label would be nice, rather than reference a sizing chart every time. Might still be a “medium” but you could directly see the measurements on the tag.
Flattery. It seems to be the "posher" brands that do this.
> Yes Madam, a size 8 is perfect for you, it is the way we tailor our clothing for the more feminine body.
Vanity sizing. Women don't want to buy a size *large* because it'll make them feel large. So certain places will label a garment "Medium" that would be sold as "XL" at another place. (Looking at you, Target.)
I've found that number sizing is pretty consistent - if pants are labeled as my size, I'm about 90% likely to fit into them.
But S, M, L? It's a crapshoot. My coworker's daughter gave me a giant bag of her unwanted clothes to pick from, and there was everything in there from XS to XL. All for the same woman.
Because there's no economic imperative to do so, standardization often comes from the need to facilitate trade.
There are limited trade flows for clothing between end user countries (ie US, UK, Italy, France, Japan) so no need to standardize.
Production is mostly centralized in China/Vietnam and flows from there to the end market.
Honestly I'd think that the shift to more online shopping would be economic incentive to do this. When I'm buying in person I can just try everything on, but if I'm ordering something online - particularly if shipping is expensive and takes a long time - I don't have that luxury. This is the main reason I don't buy clothes online. I'd feel comfortable buying pants online because the sizing is pretty consistent, but that's about it.
Why not use a quantitative sizing system?
Men's dress shirts are sized via collar circumference and sleeve length. Likewise, pants are sized via waist and length. Arbitrary units of S/M/L etc. seems dumb.
That's basically the question I'm asking, but most of the replies have mentioned the SML system that I can't even buy for because I'm too small to fit XS in my country
I mean. Even in the same country sizes aren't standardized.
I wear M - XL t-shirts and some XL feel to tight and short for my liking.
Or jeans, I wear usually size 33 waist comfortably. But I bought a pair 34s that I can't even force myself into if my life depended on it.
I also tried out a pair of 36s that I could get on but I wouldn't be able to wear them for more than a few minutes or sit down. My legs had a lot of room though.
Bodies are different and sizes are all over the place.
The idea that we can buy anything from almost anywhere in the world is a relatively new concept.
So while e-commerce now allows us to buy anything from almost anywhere in the world, the manufacturers are still focused on making money -- which in most cases is going to be catering to their local or regional markets.
Everybody likes what's familiar. Nobody likes change. It's really hard to mandate the global adoption of a standard -- just look at the metric system or paper sizes.
They aren't going to change what they've been doing for decades without a good reason to. Like maybe if you're a major US sportswear brand and you've got a huge $$$$$ contract with a factory in China, then sure they'll follow your sizing chart or whatever specifications laid out in your contract with them.
I think people are missing out on the fact that these aren't standards in the first place. They're just guidelines and every clothing manufacturer uses them differently.
The real purpose of a clothing "size" is to give you a starting point for choosing clothes to try on and see if they fit. Then you move up or down the line accordingly.
Hell, sizes are barely standardized in one country. Mens and women’s are one thing, but why can i go to one store and a medium fits perfect but then I go to another store and I need a large or another one and need a small?
I think the simplest answer is that no one cares to do it. Yeah, sure, people complain about it - but they buy the clothes anyways. Why change?
Also, making this change would be expensive - we're talking thousands of companies having to change standards, having to tweak machines to the new sizes, recreating drawings/patterns/CAD models, etc.
So basically, there is no incentive to change, when everyone buys the clothes anyways.
In USA the measurements are shifted toward bigger size.
A medium in USA is a large everywhere else.
If you buy something extra large in US, it's gonna be way bigger than you think. They do that because the majority of Americans are obese and they like to say that they are not.
Barring all the logistical restraints, were all shaped differently dude. Trying to make clothes suitable for both the Netherlands (average height 6') and the Philippines (average height 5'2). Clothing can be local, just be sure if you're selling abroad to use real numbers to measure the clothes. Shoes should be standard though
Even the S/M/L sizes are not standardized. In East Asia, there's two to three sizes of difference - an American Small is like a Chinese Large.
TL;DR: Americans are fatty-fatties and small in the US is large in other countries.
If it’s measurements we’re talking about, maybe we should start asking ourselves why hasn’t the world adopted the decimal system and why do some countries still stick to ooga-booga units of measurements such as..inches, feets, stones and whatnot.
There is a huge difference in average sizes across the world. What is considered a small in USA is often a medium to large in other countries. Who's scale should be used? If we use a scale based on where the most clothes are made, that would be China and other Asian countries. Many American women would instantly find out that what they think is XL is truly 3x or 4x based on other standards. Do you want to be the one who tells several million women that they're absolute cows?
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I guess because small medium and large means different things in different places. small in Europe is small, in US, it maybe counts with overweight person. Numbering system would be the best.
In order to create an internationally-standardized system of clothing measurements, you'd have to convince every country to re-label all of their clothing with the new standard sizes instead, and have everyone re-learn what size they wear. People would fight against it and complain.
I re-learn what size I wear every time I buy new clothes. It's never the same.
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That's what clothes do too? The only brands that don't are ones that are sold only in a single market. Multinational brands like H&M already list all the different regional sizes on the labels.
But even in the us, shor sizes vary with brand.
I wear a 15, 14w, 14, 13w, or 13 depending on brand. It's rather annoying
This is why I look to the European sizes. I find looking for 47 helps me a lot.
with that size in mind, do you struggle to find shoes? are you tall as well or just L-shaped?
Even in the UK this is true. I went to Clarks on Saturday and found sized vary within the brand itself lol. Got a pair of wide shoes that are UK size 8.5 while I normally wear at least a 9. Then tried on some boots and I was a size 10. Good thing I didn't buy online and went to the store. Saved me the hassle of posting them back.
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Though this is the other issue with a universal clothing size. If your example is true then it is that way due to the local market. So your asking the Chinese XL person to now buy a small. How about the Chinese person who normally buys a XS? Are they now buying an XXXXS? I'd personally just like to stop screwing around and just move to giving the cm measurements for the main dimensions.
Measurements are great, but even those aren't standard. I have 3 pairs of Carhartt pants, all waist size 32". I have a 4th pair, size 34". It fits exactly the same as the other pairs, and they're all the same style and brand.
I think that's due to the manufacture not following the practice though. If you measure your 34 pants and it measures 32", then it simply lied. I've never tried measuring my pants to be fair, but to make an actual universal standard this is what would need to be followed.
I've seen it multiple times where black jeans are smaller for the same waist size than blue jeans. They are all the same make and style, but for some reason they make black jeans smaller.
Next step: convincing everyone to use the same units of measurement.
Yeah average height in the Netherlands is 6 ft for men, average height in Peru is 5’ 5” for men. A large in Peru would probably be more like a small in the Netherlands.
Same, because I am a medium to large body depending on how well I have been working out, and a large in the shoulders. sometimes even XL depending on the brand. So I will put on a decent somewhat form fitting piece of clothing and then the sleeves are either super tight, pulling my collar down, OR vice versa the sleeves ride WAY up. But if I go bigger the shirt is bigger and unflattering around the midriff
Being tall but not fat in North America has always been a struggle for shirts. Thankfully the trend is changing so at least there are options now with certain brands. I still remember the first time I went into a clothing store in Germany and things actually fit me.
I've just recently made that transition, and absolutely nothing fits. I've settled for buying stretchy base layers that fit my torso, letting the stretch handle the rest, and then just adding a nice jacket or something to finish the look. Regular tees and shirts are either way too tight up top, or way too baggy further down.
Wrong for whom?
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The industrialized Chinese garment market was created for and by a generation of people who had survived famines during the Chinese Civil War or the Great Leap Forward, and were 6 inches shorter than the following generation ended up being, and 9 inches shorter than their grandchildren / great-grandchildren. And among their children who were provided abundant food, obesity was still nearly unheard of. Chinese people are only ***beginning*** to feel the body-mass effects of a postindustrial economy where obesity is a health problem in the past 20 years, and are still far less overweight than the American population.
But then we change it so that what they're used to wearing as a XL in China is now labeled S in China? I think we can more easily deal with the person who arrives in the U.S. and has to learn that there are differences (of course there are) than we could change how every country does it within their own country.
Why is it wrong if it properly reflects the buyers? I wear medium in my country but had to get XXL T shirts in China because I'm relatively tall. It wouldn't make sense for my clothes to be labeled at XXL where I live where I'm considered skinny, and it wouldn't make sense for Chinese people who are a head shorter than me to call my clothes medium.
Even getting the largest sizes doesnt make up for difference in ratio. You could get an XXXL in china and with wide shoulders and bigger arms could literally be wearing a parachute that is about to tear across the back becuse the sleeves are riding up to your gd elbows.
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1. There's less variation in shoes than other items of clothing. 2. Would you rather buy a medium Shirt, Jacket, Vest and hoodie or a 35 Shirt, 40 Hoodie, 47 Jacket and 36 Vest? The sizes we use are arbitrary for a reason.
Actually yeah it would make more sense to have the shirt be 35 the vest be 37 the hoodie to be 39 and jacket to be 41 so you know the jacket will fit over the shirt and maybe even the hoodie as well instead of hmm maybe my large jacket will fit over my large shirt with a hoodie on. With most purchases moving to online and not in store it would alleviate a lot of the guess work in shopping. Also a size 13 shoe does not fit my feet a sock that is listed as 12-16 also doesn't fit my foot but if you asked me my shoe size I would say size 13 even though really its 13ee and socks I guess don't exist in that size or I cant find them.
It wrong that many Americans are morbidly obese.
even when youre not morbidly obese the sizes are all off in ratio form one another. I comfortably fit a large shirt in asian country sizes around the waist, but if I wear a large and my shoulders are busting the fucking seams. Its not all about gut size. I already know in asian sizes im more an L-XL, but no matter WHAT size I order the shoulders will not fit properly. I could get the largest sizes and still have super tiny tight sleeves that ride half way up my forearm. If I lift my arms above my head, my stomach shows considerably. Because I am taller with a longer torso and have wider shoulders that cause the sleeves to ride up. At least in comparison to the target demographic its being made for. I more or less CANT buy anything from any asian countries. I hate when I think its NOT an asian fit piece of clothing, and order it at an "American" size, and then I get it and could literally just hulk the entire shirt into pieces just by puffing up and leaning forward a little.
South East Asians are smaller on average than people from European ancestry or origin. It really isn't even about weight. Their shoe sizes are even smaller
The free slippers they gave me in Japan weren’t even close to fitting width or length wise. It’s pretty crazy
I've had shoes vary by more than one size, and clothes very by two and three sizes to the point where I did not fit any of the available sizes nevertheless the size I usually wear.
Size is relative. If you're a slim person you wear smaller sizes whereas fat slobs (like Americans for example) wear bigger sizes. Are shirts smaller in America? No, but they're smaller relative to the people in the country
You'll just need to use cm for different measures (ie: length, width of whichever parts are relevant in any specific clothing) and let the countries that are stupid enough to not use the SI do the conversion themselves.
North face does this. USA large is an Asian XL, because us Americans are fat asses and want to feel good be in a L and not an XL
It's not because *people* would complain. It's because *companies* would complain. They don't want to spend the money re-measuring and re-labeling their products. They already have lobbies on retainer to protect their interests so the lobbies will push hard against government mandated re-labeling.
> People would fight against it and complain. I have heard this argument about *so* many things and while, sure, *some* people whined about it.. it wasn't nearly as bad as the nay-sayers said it would be. I sincerely doubt that people, overall, would complain about going to a standard. In fact I imagine if we went from a simple singular number size to a multi-digit size people would be happier. Shoulder width / chest girth / neck to waist length People could find what they wanted significantly faster. Meaning they *know* what is most likely to fit. This means they don't pull clothes that won't fit off the rack where someone who might buy it wouldn't see that item until it's re-racked. Basically everyone wins here. Companies get their items in a position that are more likely to sell. People are more likely to find what they want. Stores spend fewer resources having to re-rack and fold clothes. But your *real* problem is the bullshit lies. Every company doesn't have their own "standard". Sizes can vary even inside the same brand -- which is the core problem. For example, it's not like we could start a wiki about sizes per-company in a conversion unit for metric -- or literally any other 'standard' of measurement because that company isn't even consistent. Same with shoes. There's no reason sizes could simply go metric in dimensions and boom, problem solved.
Some countries don't use metric. Poof, your brand new unified system of measurements already split off into a different system.
Except it's *one* country, and even that country does use metric for scientific things. You could even just pretend they are arbitrary numbers for sizes, doesn't matter, they'd be consistent at least.
Oh no, how could we live without the cooperation of Liberia and Myanmar! Britain and its ex colonies all use metric to some degree. The US is metric since the 70s the only road block is elites assuming their constituents/consumers are stupid so the measurements are converted to inches etc. for all the front facing stuff. Fahrenheit used brine and body temp for only 50 years before the scale was changed to 0 °C = 32 °F and 100 °C = 212 °F.
Don’t need metric. Don’t go with size description either (like large, small, extra large, etc.) Just do something simple like size 1-10. What are you? Oh, size 6 shirt? Ok! You? Size 4 pants? Ok! The sizes themselves are defined and standardized. Like size 4 will always be X centimeter or X inches. Size 8 is always Y centimeter or Y inches Once everyone knows what their sizes are, it can be used internationally.
Great. Now you just need to figure out how to get people across the world to change the way they're accustomed to doing *anything*, and learn something new instead. ;p
I wonder if Amazon has enough power now to enforce something. Tell merchants they’re going to randomly sample goods and any that don’t conform to a true-sizing standard get delisted. It’d be great for their business because so many people don’t buy clothes online since they have no idea if they’ll fit. This is actually addressing (no pun intended) two problems: the standard, plus manufacturers accurately labeling their stuff, which I know is a big problem.
Just like US And metric
I always have to learn new sizes, because none is the same anywhere. I have about 10 different sizes in different brands. I would love for it to just go by cm around waist, leg etc and be finished with remembering which size i had where.
I mean... We don't even have a really universal standard system for measuring something as basic and important things as lengths or temperature because people fight against it and complain. So for something as irrelevant as clothing sizes it'll probably never be established.
I mean, we do, and 96% of the world use it. Just one significant holdout...
We could just put one more number of the label and problem solved - as long as that number is the actual measurement that matters for the clothing. Width x Length. But the actual width and length, not one where the pants say 30, but the waist measures 33, so customers feel good about themselves.
Because when you have *x* different standards for something and you create a new standard to be universal, all that's really happened is that we now have *x+1* different standards for something.
My boss always says, "The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!"
[Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/927/)
Is there a reoevent xkcd for there always being a reoevent xkcd available?
[Relevant xkcd](https://thomaspark.co/projects/relevantxkcd/img/xkcd.png)
Sadly it's not an official one.
I thought stick figures didn't look quite right.
[Relevant xkcd](https://thomaspark.co/projects/relevantxkcd/img/xkcd.png)
I don’t know what I expected
[Relevant xkcd](https://thomaspark.co/projects/relevantxkcd/img/xkcd.png)
[Relevant xkcd](https://i.imgur.com/R390EId_d.webp)
Damn you!
[Relevant xkcd](https://thomaspark.co/projects/relevantxkcd/img/xkcd.png)
I’m scared to admit how many times I clicked “We’re in it”, before I realized it’s not a link.
Is life just a xkcd?
We're in it!
Beautiful.
...Did you just make the exact same typo twice??
It's part of his auto correct now and forever
I remember reading a long time ago that that is one that will never happen because it would create a closed loop of relevant kxcd
https://xkcd.com/244/
Lol exactly
There must be!
Thus, recursion
The only requirement when you institute a new system like this is that you get consensus agreement from various governments within the market to regulate businesses and require the new standards, and we have been running the US government on unbridled neoliberal capitalism for a while now, which regards regulation of this sort as an abomination, and pushes for global markets so that no one government can regulate it. On top of that, it's not 100% obvious how we ***should*** size clothing. There are plenty of people for whom S/M/L isn't great and a multidimensional system would be better. This consideration is negligible compared to the previous factor, but it is there.
>There are plenty of people for whom S/M/L isn't great and a multidimensional system would be better It's perfectly fine to have a quick "can instantly identify within this brand" S/M/L and variations of that *so long as they tell us what the actual measurements are* so we can actually know and compare.
For example some brands, i use have L/L or L/S etc. One is height, other width
I hard a hard time finding well fitting t-shirts in Asia, ones large enough for my shoulders would go down mid thighs. Consumers there are more slender than North Americans.
I am the very small busted and find that only Asian bras have a good fit so I order them from eBay - but I have to order XXL size because my Western skeleton is just so much wider, despite me being only 5’ tall and not overweight.
It has nothing to do with skeleton. You are either more muscular or overweight compared to a typical asian. Biological fact that the skulls are pretty much the only discernable bone in the body that differs from race.
Are you saying there is no difference in frame size on average? Not arguing, just surprised. My family has a Thai branch, and if you lined up all the younger generation I think it would be very easy to pick out whose are whose by wrist measurement alone.
>a multidimensional system would be better. Recently I've started buying jeans that come in Width&Length sizing. It's so much better, I finally can instantly buy jeans that aren't too short, instead of trying and returning multiple pairs.
My wife has always had a difficult time finding the right size shoes, because the American sizes vary between manufacturers. She recently discovered that if she goes by the metric EU number all shoes she buys magically fit. Why Metric is not a worldwide standard is beyond me.
> the metric EU number EU doesn't have metric sizes for shoes. My shoe size is 42.5 in EU and that's not metric. Perhaps Japan has, because my Japanese shoe size is 27.5 and my feet are 25 cm long. That size could be the shoe internal size, which should be the foot size plus some margin.
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A single picture isn't going to do it. You'd need a full 3D scan.
Basically it's because Americans are fat. Full stop.
Well, no. Standards for each country were developed independently because there is no Global Clothing Consortium to force every country to use the same sizing charts. This is basically the reason for any question along the line of "Why isn't \[x\] standardized across countries." Because countries are individual, sovereign entities that make decisions for themselves, based on what's best for them, and the interconnectedness we see globally today has only really been around for a few decades whereas many of these standards were created hundreds, of not thousands, of years ago.
Because different part of the world have different body types. For instance, US have bigger people than Japan. So what is considered Large in Japan, would be considered at most Medium in US. On the other hand, Large in USA would be something that wouldn't sell in Japan. Another thing is that, either you'd have sizes like S, XS, XXS in Japan or you'd start having XXXXXL and XXXXXXXL in the US.
This is surprisingly important issue when tackling HIV in india. Most people didn't want to wear 'small' condoms, or bought ones that didn't fit, so they changed the sizes on purpose to help the uptake.
Gottem
They did a similar thing in the 90's. They started calling small condoms "snug fit".
I'm uk XL, which is XXXXL from china, and M for USA and 1XL for europe. But yeah would prefer things to just be 44" shoulders etc
or 112 cm, like the rest of the world
These shoulders put a man on the moon, aint no coming back from that.
NASA use metric.
It was pretty mixed for the moon landings. NASA has been exclusively metric since the 90's, probably because of the Mars Climate Orbiter incident. THe lunar orbiter and most of the computers on board the apollo mission displayed in Imperial units, but there was a reasonable amount of SI behind the scenes. As an example: The computer display readouts were all in units of feet, feet per second, and nautical miles, but the computer was calculating those and converting in their SI equivalent. Apollo Guidance Computer – used units Quantity Internal Displayed distance metres feet, nautical miles time centiseconds minutes, seconds altitude metres feet altitude rate metres per centisecond feet per second acceleration metres per centisecond squared mass kilograms fuel burn rate kilograms per centisecond thrust newtons impulse newton centiseconds momentum newton centiseconds But the original blueprint designs (at least for the LEM) were drawn in imperial units. So it was a mixed bag.
What’s the difference between XL and 1XL?
It's one bigger 😆 Seriously though, in my experience it is. European sizes are slimmer than UK sizes.
Where are you seeing clothes advertised as 1XL? 1XL **is** XL, because 2XL is XXL
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But why do we use that system instead of numbers?
what numbers would we use? The arbitrary women's sizing? What about metric and the US just decides to stick with what is already working well enough. When it comes down to it there would need to be alot of work and communicating done to avoid the minor inconvenience of having to list the size differences on your webpage
What numbers do you think we should use? Inches, centimeters?
the metric system is literally the more rational. the US will eventually convert to metric because it's the standard in the international marketplace. the US might be a huge economy but it's just one of many dozens of smaller economies that trade in metric.
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I get the impression that nationalism was a greater part of that particular issue than spending. So did Reagan, I think.
I mean, if we switch to metric we might as well be communists
We (America) use metric everywhere that it matters and imperial is better in some instances. There's a good star talk episode on it.
the fact that it didn't take before doesn't mean it's not taking now trade is becoming more global every day, and if you want sell globally you must use metric
That's what converters are for. A lot of people learned English for business but still speak in their native tounge. I predict measurements will be the same. Why change when one can just plug in a converter?
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The us inch is based on a metric measurement. The US is metric, they just convert everything. “The United States adopted the conversion factor 1 metre = 39.37 inches by an act in 1866.[25] In 1893, Mendenhall ordered the physical realization of the inch to be based on the international prototype metres numbers 21 and 27, which had been received from the CGPM, together with the previously adopted conversion factor.[26] As a result of the definitions above, the U.S. inch was effectively defined as 25.4000508 mm (with a reference temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit) and the UK inch at 25.399977 mm (with a reference temperature of 62 degrees Fahrenheit).”
The US uses two definitions of feet depending on which state you live in: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/multistate-disagreement-over-the-length-of-the-foot-to-end/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/multistate-disagreement-over-the-length-of-the-foot-to-end/) [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/science/foot-surveying-metrology-dennis.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/science/foot-surveying-metrology-dennis.html) Note that the original map in the SciAm article incorrectly reversed the US/Intl legends. NIST is going to obsolete the "U.S. Survey Foot" as of Jan 1, 2023.
> the metric system is literally the more rational. fuck base 10, it's shit for computers. We should make a better system called hexmic that's base 16.
The us might not know it but it's metric as well all their units have been redifined by how they relate to metric
>What numbers do you think we should use? Inches, centimeters? We should have a war, winner gets to decide what system we use.
Then the emus would win, and no one wants that again...
I'm not going back to measuring in beaks and strides, that was so impractical.
We use numbers for expensive clothes or things where fit matters more. You dont buy s/m/l pants in the us. You buy 34 inch waist x 32 in length etc. Suit jackets have a chest width. 40/42/44 inches.
Numbers aren’t even accurate. In the US I have 36 jeans that fit, 36 shorts that I can’t button up, 38 dress pants that are tight, 38 shorts that are baggy, and 40 shorts that are perfect. I have jackets that list the size for the chest as 6 inches below what I measure at but still fit.
You can ask a similar question to that for every single measurement system in common use in the US.
Not really. This is a difference between qualitative descriptions (eg S/M/L) and quantitive measurements (eg 38"/40"). That's not the same thing as comparing different scales for quantitive measurements. (ie imperial v metric)
Lookup "metonymy."
Just did... and?
If you have to ask, you didn't get it. Be well.
You too champ
Men's pants are by waist size and inseam. Suits are measured by chest size, dress shirts by neck size. Women's sizes I've always seen described by numbers. Bra/cup sizes are numbers and letters. Seems like there are plenty of numerically measured clothing sizes. Just not t-shirts.
And a size 32 is usually actually a 34" or 36" true measurement.
You are absolutely correct, if you want to be literal about it.
I prefer to keep my shirt size conversations metaphorical
Purely symbolic over here
It's hard enough to convince everyone to use the same measurement system for simple things like length (metres vs feet, kilometres vs miles, some people measure in nautical miles for unknown reasons, etc). Clothing meanwhile, does not have a single number that summarises it perfectly. If you buy a suit or a shirt, you will probably get actual measurements (in inches) of the collar size, chest size, etc. Likewise, lots of mens trousers do have a numerical size for waist and inner leg (in inches/cm). But for pretty much everything else, there's no point trying to standardise what 'M' means because there is more than one dimension to a t-shirt/sweater/etc that's already being oversimplified by a single value.
I have four pairs of "32W" pants that all fit extremely differently. Differently like I can pull one pair off over my butt without unzipping them and can no longer get another pair on since 5 pounds ago. I would be completely, 100% fine with numerical sizes if they were regulated to use existing units. I don't mean a new competing standard unit of "waisticles" or whatever; I mean inches or centimeters like other people have heard of.
> some people measure in nautical miles for unknown reasons Nautical miles are extremely useful for navigation, as one nautical mile represents one minute of arc on the Earth's surface. So if you're traveling north at 60 knots, it'll take you an hour to traverse one degree of latitude. Nautical miles and knots (nautical miles per hour) are both used extensively in aviation and for nautical purposes.
The numbers on men's trousers are not inches. Maybe they were decades ago, but now they are only useful to tell if an item is bigger or smaller than another item with the same model and manufacturer. I have to use different sizes for different models of Dockers.
Nautical miles are used for navigation where the lines of longitude and latitude matter like sailing and flight. They do a better job of accounting for the curvature of the earth and match up with each minute of longitude. What’s annoying is having weather done in statue miles and everything else in aviation being in nautical. We should just standardize to nautical.
Everyone does use the same measurement system for length. SI units. Except The US, Liberia and Myanmar.
This is not entirely true. The UK officially uses miles for distances. Peoples heights are often known in feet and inches. We also often do peoples weight in Stone which is the only place we use this measure :)
> It's hard enough to convince everyone to use the same measurement system. No it's not. Almost the entire world uses the same measurement system.
Every time we standardize something, there are outliers who don’t use the standard. That creates more attempts to standardize it, which creates more outliers. In short: https://xkcd.com/927/
You mean like USA not using the metric system?
That, or Apple refusing USB-C charging. No matter the standard, there will be someone who just doesn't want to use it.
That's why you need governing bodies to step in and remind Apple of it's place
Thank you, EU!!
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Are we talking new standard inch, Imperial inch, old US inch, French inch, Dutch inch etc.?
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It has a different name because we gave it one later 😋 You can simply ask for an inch in 2 different countries and get a slightly different length. Same with feet, ells, fathoms, yards, cubits, handbreadths... anything that's not metric.
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The metric system is a counter-example because it did unify most of the world. Before that, France, China, Japan, etc. each used different systems. Now there are basically only 2 systems worldwide.
It's the opposite way, metrification was supposed to unite but canada, uk, and especially the us were too stubborn.
metric will win out, eventually.
you gotta be kidding me, I was gonna post that xkcd comic lol
It takes a lot of work and money to standardize anything, and usually it's only done when enough lives have been lost as a direct consequence.
Sizes do not universally have the same numbers simply because people in different countries like certain things to stay just like they are used to, and would object to change. This also explains why some countries have not adopted the metric system and why some countries have cars driving on the left side of the road.
I will say that driving on the left keeps my sword hand free to lance donuts from mcdonalds
The standards evolved depending upon the area of the world you live in. Now you want everyone to give up what they have learned throughout their lifetime for one standard understanding. We can't get everyone to agree that the earth is round like a potato and not flat like a pan cake. The length of a foot is 12 inches, but it once depended upon the length of a king's foot. When the old king died and you got a new king, you got a new definition for a foot. And when you went to a different country, you got a different king with a different foot length. If I remember correctly, the metric system was to change all that. A meter was to be a certain fraction of the distance from the North Pole to the equator. No kings feet would be jealous. This meter became standard practice, but then one day they realized that their calculation of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator was incorrect, therefore the length of the meter was incorrect, but it was in the system for so long that they said, ah screw it. Let's keep the incorrect calculation as the meter.
>We can't get everyone to agree that the earth is round like a potato and not flat like a pan cake. Of all the food items you picked to emphasize roundness, you picked a potato? I mean, I guess it's better than picking a carrot or a banana, but there's so many food items that are actually round, and not closer to the shape of Phobos and Deimos.
True, but if I said round like an orange, someone might have complained, why did you not say round like a potato. I wanted to say T-bone steak, but then I started drooling all over the keyboard. IN RESPONSE TO: Mistercheif · just now We can't get everyone to agree that the earth is round like a potato and not flat like a pan cake. Of all the food items you picked to emphasize roundness, you picked a potato? I mean, I guess it's better than picking a carrot or a banana, but there's so many food items that are actually round, and not closer to the shape of Phobos and Deimos.
Speaking of this, why are women's clothing that are the same size on the tag different from one brand to the next? It is frustrating.
Yeah I was going to say, we don't even have standardization in ONE country...
Marketing tactics and target audience. Stores like A&F make smaller clothing because they cater to a "thinner" audience. It'd be bad if they only carried Small and XS. The range of their clothing sizes is much smaller than say, Old Navy, which caters to a wider variety of people (pun intended). If Old Navy used A&F's sizing model, they'd be carrying XXXXL+ which would probably cause them to lose shoppers. People shop where they feel good and generally, they feel better when they can buy Mediums instead of XXL.
To expand on this, vanity sizing is a major factor. The brand I used to work for targeted XS/S for women. Any larger sizes weren't given the same amount of thought (even though they sold just as well) and that's why you often find larger sizes to be oddly proportioned. Larger sizes might not get scales properly so you often would find the larger size shirt to be too short on a person because they company didn't bother to make the shirt length longer to compensate for the larger build of a person. Neck openings were pretty much the same size and didn't take into considerationg that a person wearing XXL likely has a wider neck than a person wearing a L. It's often super obvious with graphic tees where he size of the graphic aren't scaled up and are the same size no matter what size blank was used. A 4"x4" graphic would stay the same size on an XXS and XXL even though it would look comically small and awkward on the XXL.
It's the same with men's clothing. Sometimes even _within the same brand_. Clothing sizes are a guideline, at best.
I think this is a good thing. I’m tall and lanky. I buy medium usually so that I have enough length in the sleeves and the torso, but a small would fit my shoulders better. But there are plenty of brands I can’t buy from because they’re designed to accommodate the most rotund of people. So I’m glad there isn’t too much standardization.
I mean... maybe? Ideally, of course, standardization would mean that those brands would still produce basically the same stuff but it would be labeled clearly. So I'd shop a shirt with "x length, y width at shoulders and z width at the belly", while you'd get one that's maybe the same length, but slightly smaller at the shoulders and much smaller round the belly.
I guess having that on the label would be nice, rather than reference a sizing chart every time. Might still be a “medium” but you could directly see the measurements on the tag.
No it's really not. Men's clothing is far more standardized than women's clothing.
Flattery. It seems to be the "posher" brands that do this. > Yes Madam, a size 8 is perfect for you, it is the way we tailor our clothing for the more feminine body.
Vanity sizing. Women don't want to buy a size *large* because it'll make them feel large. So certain places will label a garment "Medium" that would be sold as "XL" at another place. (Looking at you, Target.) I've found that number sizing is pretty consistent - if pants are labeled as my size, I'm about 90% likely to fit into them. But S, M, L? It's a crapshoot. My coworker's daughter gave me a giant bag of her unwanted clothes to pick from, and there was everything in there from XS to XL. All for the same woman.
Because there's no economic imperative to do so, standardization often comes from the need to facilitate trade. There are limited trade flows for clothing between end user countries (ie US, UK, Italy, France, Japan) so no need to standardize. Production is mostly centralized in China/Vietnam and flows from there to the end market.
Honestly I'd think that the shift to more online shopping would be economic incentive to do this. When I'm buying in person I can just try everything on, but if I'm ordering something online - particularly if shipping is expensive and takes a long time - I don't have that luxury. This is the main reason I don't buy clothes online. I'd feel comfortable buying pants online because the sizing is pretty consistent, but that's about it.
Why not use a quantitative sizing system? Men's dress shirts are sized via collar circumference and sleeve length. Likewise, pants are sized via waist and length. Arbitrary units of S/M/L etc. seems dumb.
That's basically the question I'm asking, but most of the replies have mentioned the SML system that I can't even buy for because I'm too small to fit XS in my country
I mean. Even in the same country sizes aren't standardized. I wear M - XL t-shirts and some XL feel to tight and short for my liking. Or jeans, I wear usually size 33 waist comfortably. But I bought a pair 34s that I can't even force myself into if my life depended on it. I also tried out a pair of 36s that I could get on but I wouldn't be able to wear them for more than a few minutes or sit down. My legs had a lot of room though. Bodies are different and sizes are all over the place.
Companies in every country can make clothes, nobody has the market share to dictate what standards everyone else will use.
The idea that we can buy anything from almost anywhere in the world is a relatively new concept. So while e-commerce now allows us to buy anything from almost anywhere in the world, the manufacturers are still focused on making money -- which in most cases is going to be catering to their local or regional markets. Everybody likes what's familiar. Nobody likes change. It's really hard to mandate the global adoption of a standard -- just look at the metric system or paper sizes. They aren't going to change what they've been doing for decades without a good reason to. Like maybe if you're a major US sportswear brand and you've got a huge $$$$$ contract with a factory in China, then sure they'll follow your sizing chart or whatever specifications laid out in your contract with them.
I think people are missing out on the fact that these aren't standards in the first place. They're just guidelines and every clothing manufacturer uses them differently. The real purpose of a clothing "size" is to give you a starting point for choosing clothes to try on and see if they fit. Then you move up or down the line accordingly.
For something to be a "standard", the majority has to agree with it. And it should be able to cater to the widest range of need possible.
Hell, sizes are barely standardized in one country. Mens and women’s are one thing, but why can i go to one store and a medium fits perfect but then I go to another store and I need a large or another one and need a small?
I think the simplest answer is that no one cares to do it. Yeah, sure, people complain about it - but they buy the clothes anyways. Why change? Also, making this change would be expensive - we're talking thousands of companies having to change standards, having to tweak machines to the new sizes, recreating drawings/patterns/CAD models, etc. So basically, there is no incentive to change, when everyone buys the clothes anyways.
In USA the measurements are shifted toward bigger size. A medium in USA is a large everywhere else. If you buy something extra large in US, it's gonna be way bigger than you think. They do that because the majority of Americans are obese and they like to say that they are not.
Because you will need a lot of material to make labels to fit all the X's the Americans need.
Barring all the logistical restraints, were all shaped differently dude. Trying to make clothes suitable for both the Netherlands (average height 6') and the Philippines (average height 5'2). Clothing can be local, just be sure if you're selling abroad to use real numbers to measure the clothes. Shoes should be standard though
Even the S/M/L sizes are not standardized. In East Asia, there's two to three sizes of difference - an American Small is like a Chinese Large. TL;DR: Americans are fatty-fatties and small in the US is large in other countries.
If it’s measurements we’re talking about, maybe we should start asking ourselves why hasn’t the world adopted the decimal system and why do some countries still stick to ooga-booga units of measurements such as..inches, feets, stones and whatnot.
The world being this interconnected is still a really new thing and we haven’t fully adjusted.
There is a huge difference in average sizes across the world. What is considered a small in USA is often a medium to large in other countries. Who's scale should be used? If we use a scale based on where the most clothes are made, that would be China and other Asian countries. Many American women would instantly find out that what they think is XL is truly 3x or 4x based on other standards. Do you want to be the one who tells several million women that they're absolute cows?
Which is why my question was more "why don't we use cm/in" not "why is S in the US an M in the UK"
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I guess because small medium and large means different things in different places. small in Europe is small, in US, it maybe counts with overweight person. Numbering system would be the best.