Just an informal observation, but I liked Stuart’s comment about the “Bell curve changing all over the place”. Style is so much more globally uniform than it used to be; I travel a lot and common street style has really changed since the 90s. No longer place-specific, Europeans wear the same styles Americans do and vice versa, especially with regard to high-street/street fashion. There are many specific cultures of street fashion that are emulated/imitated globally, down to the minutest details. It makes sense that this would contribute to some of the strange sizing and fit evolutions.

And then I’m fascinated with ‘fit as social construct’. I have a few blazers from recent high-end designers, and one of the persistent trends for the last decade has been rather “masculine” armholes and shoulders that fit tightly. The whole front chest area is tight, the sleeves tight. It’s almost as if the “poor fit” is really about a style idea–which is looking as if one is squeezing into boyish clothes.

A similar trend was going on for men, like this jacket with purposefully short sleeves and a weird baggy back. Appalling fit to some, but others would pay $3000 for this.

Not to use luxury fashion as the definition, but these styles are often what Topshop, etc. knock-offs imitate, and so eventually the “poor fit” reiterates until it becomes the standard. Fit itself seems less of a concern for younger people. I wasn’t really concerned with it in my 20s (the 90s), nor were any of my peers. I’d venture to say that’s still true. Are people having longer education and entering “professional” work environments later? Is it possible that there are more leisurely professions than ever, more non-uniformed professions in which people can express themselves and wear whatever they want? (I live in Austin, TX, which has an abundance of design, tech and internet business–even businessmen wear t-shirts.)

Someone needs to write a book on all these things–a fascinating subject! And I am not in the business, but I am interested in body perceptions and how human ideals of shape and form keep evolving.

So…in many ways, I think clothing fits *better* today than 20 or 30 years ago. Levi’s makes Curvy Cut jeans in multiple lengths and the Petite Medium is perfect for me. Several clothing companies are offering swimsuits and camisoles in bra sizes; there is an English company that even makes button-down shirts in D and DD cup sizes. The addition of Lycra makes clothing more forgiving and there are more options as far as styles are concerned. For example, you can buy jeans that are low-rise, mid-rise, or even hi-rise, in flare, boot-cut, straight leg or skinny — vs. back in 1986 when pretty much ALL jeans were high-waisted and tapered-leg. (Being a short-waisted person, I always loathed high-waisted pants and I used to buy boys’ jeans solely for the lower rise).

So a lot of progress has been made in making better-fitting clothing. Alas, the majority of people are still walking around in ill-fitting and unflattering apparel for other reasons.

First of all, people are a lot fatter today then they were 20 or 30 years ago. When I was a teenager, I weighed 103 lbs and had measurements of 33-23-33 — and I was not especially small. Most of my friends were around the same size – we all wore size 3 or 5 (and that’s a 1980s size 3 which is like a size 0 now!) Size 9/10 was what a “fat” girl would wear. We were definitely not anorexic or anything; there just was not the constant snacking and constant drinking of sugary “energy” drinks that goes on nowadays.

Secondly, today’s fashions include, rather ironically, some of the least-flattering silhouettes in the history of clothing, at a time when there are probably more heavyset people than ever before in history. For example, the current look of a skimpy tank top and ultra-low-rise skinny jeans is something only about 1% of the population has any business trying to wear. For the rest of humankind — even people of normal weight and decent fitness levels — this is the sort of look that is designed to spotlight areas that are just not attractive on most people. I can’t pull that look off — and I’m a size 4/6! Yet I see chunky teenagers spilling out of their camisoles and ginormous muffin-tops pouring out of their tight jeans — and I think how much better they would have looked back in, say, 1986 — in a long sweater, stirrup pants and ankle boots, with some big hair to balance out their hips…

I participated in a historical re-creation event once, and I was surprised to discover that my eighteenth-century period costume was not only quite comfortable once I got used to it — it was really a universally flattering silhouette. There is a reason that the fitted bodice/full skirt look was popular for several hundred years — almost every woman looks decent in it. It cleverly showcases areas that are attractive on most people; while concealing troublesome sports like poochy bellies, wide derrieres, and jiggly thighs. I realized then why you see so many plus-sized ladies drawn to things like Renaissance fairs — the clothing is so much more flattering than current fashions.

So in short my answer is that many things actually do fit much better, but some of the the styles themselves are just really hard to wear.

However, I am hugely appreciative of the improvement in fabric quality that allows for less exacting fit. I’m not just referring to spandex. Different fibres and blends, different drape in the fabric, even different prints. Beautiful fabrics mean that you can get away with much simpler styles.

Whilst it is very easy to say that pattern-making is not taught as well, every now and then I see a style line that I think cleverly address a fit problem. One example was a (designer, yes) t-shirt with a yoke across the top of the shoulder. Most people would not even notice it, I guess. I think that by eliminating a seam line across the top of the shoulder, you remove the signs of forward-shoulder fitting issues.

There is clever design out there, you just have to keep a look out for it!

I think there is a combination of factors contributing to the fit issues, some have to do with the grade between sizes being more spread out to accommodate the making of larger sizes, some has to do with the designer’s interpretation of fit, and some has to do with the people who determine fit not understanding it properly. I know in design school we had limited opportunity to fit garments on real people, and when we did, they were tall, skinny models. Combine that with the fact that most people in fashion design school (in my case this was about 5 years ago) were interested in becoming designers and had little interest in actually sewing or designing patterns, and there is a gap in the number of pattern makers learning the ropes from more experienced counterparts. Even though most designers don’t sew everything, understanding the fit and construction to achieve that fit will make a difference in how the line ends up.

I’d point out the whole concept of speed/lag times, cost effectiveness decisions and a rapidly changing population.

Many of my clients use demographic data (size analysis) that’s so old it doesn’t remotely represent their idea of who their market is. Is insane and very poor business I agree. I highlight this for one very important reason … how often is it viable to put in the time and money to redraft your basic block/sloper models assuming you’ve found a discrepancy in the first place? Do companies attribute lower sales to the poor economic climate, for example, or poor perception of fit? Does a company need to stick to a particular size proportion to retain existing clients (repeat market)? These are often conflicting issues for management and the management types rarely seem to understand the implications of fit as well as they might have when the boss was a fashion designer and not a bean counter. Eventually they work it out or go broke … there’s a lag time for most companies I’ve worked with and I find it disheartening.

But what am I saying? This all depends on the population changing shape doesn’t it. I mean if the Bell curve is the same as it was 100 years ago then so what? Trouble is, the Bell curve is changing all over the place. Let’s consider this. The average American is significantly larger than the average white European (trust me on that I have the data to prove it), but not only that, the center of the curve is displaced toward the heavy end and is much flatter. The average Japanese person is significantly smaller than the overall average with a very narrow peak (but smaller people generally tend to have the same overall shape). When you start to mix up a whole stack of different cultures (multiculturalism wasn’t so prevalent in the past few decades) you start getting some very strange sizing distributions that change/evolve in a short period of time. Now this certainly doesnt account for all the bad fit out there but may well contribute to the issue.

My biggest blame for poor fit today (irrespective of the past) is poorly trained pattern makers(not entirely their fault) with little help to keep up with rapidly changing textile technology … hey guys you can’t expect the fabric to do everything that you can’t no matter how advanced it is!

Oh yeah … you shouldn’t be allowed to design clothes until you have a grown ups body :-)

PS: Kathleen you really need to stop asking these great questions that force me to say stuff I know I’ll regret :-)

What is a small in Turkey (where a small woman may be 4’6”) is not the same as small in the US. And XL as in the US just doesn’t exist here. I am 5’5”, 36 bust, 28 waist and 38 hips and I sometimes cannot get into the XL in Turkey. XL in the US generally drowns me.

Globalization and population movement – that’s what did it! But hey, there’s no point in going “home” now! Or it’s not possible.

We need to go back to paying more for our clothes and buying fewer of them, maybe? Then the manufacturers might be able to provide more variety and better sizing?

The poor fit had to do with the waist being too loose and the thighs being too tight such that bending over to pick up anything in these pants would reveal a little too much. I was a typical size 6 or 8 and tried things in both of these sizes. I had the same issue with all of them.

Have you seen the entries I wrote about camel toe, wad and bad pant fit? Look at the marker in this entry. It’s why there’s gobs of fabric at center front. I really do believe this was a cost saving measure that became a style and everybody gravitated to it. I’m increasingly annoyed by it. If I find jeans with a snug thigh measure (comfortably snug), the waist is entirely too big especially right over the belly which is precisely where I don’t need extra fabric making me look heavier. I want it to pull me in and compress (I have a pair of NYDJ “tummy tuck jeans” with a five or six inch overlap of excess fabric at the waist, making me look like I have a kangaroo pouch and a small joey. I can only wear these jeans with very loose hip length tops or I look pregnant). I’m having to wear belts now, something I never had to do. I do have the traditional hourglass figure but most jeans aren’t being cut for that shape contrary to what everyone says. My waist is not unusually small and my thighs aren’t proportionally too big. In fact, in older pants, if something fits me in the waist, the hip and thighs are too roomy because my waist has gotten thicker with age. And I live with it because well, it’s only to be expected.

We’ve got the polar opposite now, pants are designed to fit ice-cream cone shaped people with too large girth at the waist. Again, see that entry I linked to that shows how this rampant pattern change is happening. To improve fabric yields, inches are subtracted from the side seam and added to the center front. You can’t take an inch out of the side seam, add it to center front and expect to get the same result as before. It could work in a skirt but not pants.