Shrinkage and fit

Posted by Kathleen Fasanella on Jul 18, 2005 at 1:30 pm / Fit and Sizing / Trackback

It occurred to me that a facet of best practices of apparel manufacturing could be construed by consumers as vanity sizing. Specifically, I’m referring to the practice of cutting for shrinkage because best practices dictate that you’d cut a different pattern for each fabric color way if the degree of shrinkage is not uniform -which is usually the case- between color ways. Now while it is true that many manufacturers will then pre-launder the styles before shipping, the full measure of shrinkage is usually not realized with the pre-wash. Therefore, when consumers try on identical goods of differing color ways from the same manufacturer, each clothing item will not fit the same although it would after having been laundered several times. In this environment, I can see how a consumer would question the integrity of a manufacturer’s sizing standard. Similarly, consumers are unaware of cutting for shrinkage and are less likely to account for it when making clothing decisions.

I think the biggest problem here is really a failure to communicate on the part of manufacturers. Manufacturers should make more of an effort to convey the anticipated shrinkage of a garment -specific to each color way- on hang tags. I believe consumer dissatisfaction could be reduced markedly were manufacturers to itemize that a given style was designed to fit a body of x dimensions. Existing research has shown that consumers are not as distressed by variations in sizing across manufacturers as they are by a failure to detail the differences on hang tags. Were manufacturers to spell out that their size 10 fit a body with x dimensions, consumers could then move on to the size 10 that more closely resembled their figure type.

[Amendment]
With much regret I’ve closed comments to this post. The reason is that people do not bother to read the other posts in the series and so -the issues in which they find themselves in disagreement having been discussed in depth elsewhere- are inappropriate. I do not mind “being wrong” but you need to read all of the posts before you try to tell me that. Now, if you read all of the posts in this series and then wish to make a comment, email it to me and I’ll be happy to publish it. If you skip one or two of them, believe me, I’ll know judging from the content of your comment. These are the posts in this series:
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

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