Great visualizations but you can't buy a shoe without knowing that a 10 in one brand is not a 10 in a second brand or that for example you need to size down when ordering Dr. Martens then there is no way to expect clothing to be more accurate than a shoe.
Sizing chaos
41–50 of 458 posts
Re: Sizing chaos
#42> I took stacks upon stacks of jeans with me to the dressing room, searching in vain for that one pair that fit perfectly. Over 20 years later, my hunt for the ideal pair of jeans continues. But now as an adult, I’m stuck with the countless ways that women’s apparel is not made for the average person, like me. I'm a 5'6 145lbs adult male. Y'know how many clothes are made that fit me? T-shirts, size S, fitted; and dre…
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Re: Sizing chaos
#43Women's sizing is so dumb. They could just provide inches or cm like they do for the men, but for some reason (well for marketing reasons, as discussed extensively in the article), they use these random sizes and numbers that aren't consistent and change over time. I think this is why stretchy materials are getting more and more popular. The women in my house use stretchy pants almost exclusively, because they are mu…
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Re: Sizing chaos
#44This feels almost like a made up issue - like, "we want to considered victims so lets make up something to whine about" A few concrete issues: (1) they complain there are no international standards - And? Why should Japan, who's average size be much smaller than the USA be required to use USA standards? Their population doesn't need to care about people outside of Japan. You could say they should relabel the clothing…
Japan was the example that stood out to me. (It's where UNIQLO is from.)
I'm 5'11"/180cm with US11/EU45 feet. They didn't sell boots that fit me in Japan. I got a deal on an "XL" jacket that the salesman insisted I buy, because I was the only person to have ever come into the store that it fit. (It's the only thing I've ever worn labelled "XL.")
Re: Sizing chaos
#45>By age 15, most girls have gone through growth spurts and puberty, and they’ve reached their adult height.
>Many have started to outgrow the junior’s size section.
Ummmmm.... What? I wore junior’s sizes well into my 30s. Am I really that much of an outlier?
Re: Sizing chaos
#46[flagged]
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we've already asked you repeatedly to stop.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45681833 (Oct 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44728916 (July 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44287383 (June 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36346650 (June 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29857405 (Jan 2022)
I don't want to ban you, but if you keep doing this, we're going to end up doing that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.
Re: Sizing chaos
#47[dead]
Re: Sizing chaos
#48Interesting visualizations, but I don't understand what the thesis is. To me, the conclusion says: 1. Luxury fashion thrives on exclusivity, which is exclusionary. 2. Clothing size standards do not match diverse body types. 3. There is no sizing standard, and companies size however they want.
0. All commercial premade adult women’s clothing is made exclusively for a small minority of women with hourglass body shapes.
The number one thesis takeaway for me, that I didn’t realize as a woman even after years of dealing with sizing drama, is that clothing manufacturers exclusively market to hourglass body shape alone — which some might recognize better as “pinup model” proportions. As a non-hourglass along with the vast majority of other U.S. women, it’s quite the shock to discover that megacorps are targeting a fraction of the market (hourglass) rather than the largest segment (rectangle).
Re: Sizing chaos
#49It is genuinely incredible how well-fitting clothing is only generally available to some one-third of women who fit well into the anticipated height-waist ratio. Petite options exist in some places, but god forbid you're tall - your choices will be limited to "too short" and "too short and also too wide" if you try to go for a size up.
Re: Sizing chaos
#50I might have missed this in the scroll format but is there any reason not to drop the qualitative size names and just use an actual dimension or two?
They can lie with those too: https://www.reddit.com/r/fatlogic/comments/8srelb/info_graph...