Joanna sends word of a newly released sizing study commissioned by Talbots. Somehow, 85% of women know if something fits them by looking at the size tag but 62% of them don’t know their body measurements! Moreover, only 16% of…

“Push” manufacturing can be described as producing an entire line of products without pre-selling and taking orders for it. This means making up a bunch of stuff without knowing if anybody wants it beforehand. In my opinion, push manufacturing is…

It is wuth much for me sending you this mail with the hope that I find you well.

My name is Fredy Tembo. I am a guy aged 24 and I am from Zimbabwe. Currently I am studying for my Advanced Diploma in Creative Art and Design at Chinhoyi Unuserty of Technology.

As such, I am sending you this mail requesting if you could assist me on how I could join you n your fashion designing company. This is because that I am quite good in the field of visual arts, especially the fashion designing field. Actually, I have always had the passion for designing fashion.

On that one, I look foward to your assistance.

Yours Faithfully

Fredy Tembo

Second, I can see you are extremely distressed with your recent online shopping experiences -justifiably so in my opinion- and I’d like to write a future topic covering precisely your complaints because I agree it’s an egregious problem! I agree that the fees you were compelled to pay were unreasonable. Similarly, I agree that the goods were misrepresented to you; you ordered the goods based on the provided description and had they described their sizing more accurately, you would have ordered another size entirely. Maybe you should bring up that last point with your online retailer. The misrepresentation of goods is fraud. Personally, I think you’re entitled to a refund for shipping.

However, I do not agree that your online experience was due to “vanity sizing”. While I appreciate that you do not agree, it is inappropriate to make the pronouncement that I am wrong when you have not read the entire fitting series as this issue is so complex. These articles appear as follows:

http://www.fashion-incubator.com/mt/archives/the_myth_of_vanity_sizing.html
http://www.fashion-incubator.com/mt/archives/fit_and_sizing_entropy.html
http://www.fashion-incubator.com/mt/archives/push_manufacturing_subverting_the_fit_feedback_loop.html
http://www.fashion-incubator.com/mt/archives/sizing_evolution.html
http://www.fashion-incubator.com/mt/archives/shrinkage_and_fit.html

Lastly, I reiterate that if we adopt an international fitting standard which manufacturers would be compelled to follow, this would narrow the range of fitting options to anything other than the “average” person, cutting out fitting options for the remaining 49% of the market. I further reiterate the question, why does everyone assume clothing would be sized to fit their unique characteristics? Why does everyone assume they are “the average” representation of their size and figure type? However, I strongly agree with your statement that the correct labeling of the sizing of apparel should be enforced. I agree that accurate inch/cm measures reflecting direct measures is the only way to reduce headaches, time, money and frustrations such that you’ve experienced.

I am sorry this has happened to you. My retailing DEs won’t like me for saying so, but I haven’t bought clothing online and I’d be very unlikely to do so unless it were something oversized, making accurate fitting less of an issue.

There is some merit in the author’s argument that a Medium for example will necessarily be different across different “genres” of clothing, but the retailer should at least give the accurate measurements that correspond to their Medium.

When an online retailer says on their online sizing guide that a Medium fits a 28 inch waist and you receive the item and it’s 32 inches at the waist is that not vanity sizing? Now you have to return it, the $16 that you paid for 2nd day shipping will not be refunded and now you have to try to guess how many sizes down you should order. If you want to buy an item for a specific occasion, it’s best to do this at least three months in advance since you can expect a lot of shipping back and forth. I lost a lot of money on shipping charges and time in the back and forth in trying to find what sizes fit what measurements for pretty much every online retailer I shopped with over a two month period. If you are lucky, the customer service rep will tell you something like “I know it says the Medium fits a 28 inch waist but it’s cut big, choose the Extra Small instead”. Common sense would dictate that a woman with a 28″ waist although not large, is not an extra small person by any means but I am actually somewhat swayed by the author’s argument that it’s possible this is the smallest person in the retailer’s target demographic.

I learnt the costly way that when buying clothes online, the size guide is useless and that it’s best to talk to a person who has actually seen the item, give them your measurements and hope that they will be able to tell you what size to buy.

The body type argument against standardizing sizing has no merit. The tape measure does not change based on whether you are top or bottom heavy. One should be able to know that an item is so many inches around the waist and so many inches around the fullest part of the bust and so on and if the measurements fit buy it otherwise buy something else.

An international sizing standard would save everyone a lot of headaches, time and money. Maybe this sizing should not use terms like Small, Medium or Extra Large and just use numbers instead or even simpler just the correct measurements of the vital areas like hips, bust and waist for women and whatever corresponds for men.

In my continuing series discussing fit and apparel sizing see #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6; I’ve failed to explain how sizing determinations are made, how standards are drawn followed by industry application. In this post I’ll explain how survey…

I’ve been avoiding the topic of fit and sizing -which aren’t the same thing- for a very long time. I haven’t written about it because a truly comprehensive discussion is very controversial and guaranteed to piss off everyone from consumers…

Judging from continuing comments and emails in reference to my fit and sizing postings here, here and here; I’d have to conclude that I have failed to explain the myth of vanity sizing adequately. This is another attempt. ——————————…

http://mbinfo.mbdesign.net/CAD-History.htm

I am getting into this for semantic reasons. I think it’s perfectly understandable that aerospace engineers and architects are using computers to help *design* because you can do specific fine-tuning tasks iteratively and without regard to aesthetics (form follows function when building hypersonic aircraft and patch antennae). However, it is frightening to me that a *drawing* or *drafting* tool has become a **design** tool in *fashion*, where form is at least as important as function [1]. If it’s not, then let’s declare victory, go home, and surrender the field to the WOATS and GOATS.

To tie back to Kathleen’s original point: it’s bad enough that people are using the bad CAD templates to do their patternmaking. It engenders slothful and ignorant patternmakers (computer programmers call it GIGO – garbage in, garbage out). But I am really frightened to think they are using CAD to replace designers. When that happens, it means that the design work was all done by the engineer back at the software company, and all the fashion “designers” can do at that point is pick the material, colors, and buttons. Yuck. That’s one reason why I dislike hip-hop so much: the most productive “musician” in all hip-hop is probably some Japanese engineer at Roland who programmed a handful of 4/4 patterns into an early drum machine or synthesizer, and now every single song is the same 4/4. Some are slower, some are faster, you can fatten or thin it in the mix, you can change the equalization, some may even have an extra or a missing snare beat, but otherwise it’s all the same bland gruel. Notice that Puff Daddy (aka Sean John) is both a hip-hop and a fashion design “artist”?

[1] I’m willing to concede that for some things, like lingerie, form leads function, whereas for technical applications, such as biking shorts, function is more important than form. In both extremes, though, form and function are very close in importance. However, in strictly engineering applications like antenna, airfoil, or building construction, function trumps form even though we like to have a nicely styled exterior. A good looking antenna that doesn’t receive or a good looking airplane that doesn’t fly is not worth producing.