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Sizing chaos

pudding.cool

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Re: Sizing chaos

#271

Post by orbisvicis »

roenxi wrote: post #266
orbisvicis wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clothing brands detect this in their customer studies and respond appropriately. Respond how? > lots of different sub-groups of the female population to signal lots of different things Signal what?

> Respond how? By destandardising sizes. It isn't that hard to standardise if an industry thinks it'll help them; the article suggests there is already a relevant standards body. These companies are probably doing it for a reason. My guess would be maybe someone doesn't want to be an XXL 18 at J Crew so they can go to Reformation where they are more of a Regular 14. > Signal what? Age, health and status for women. Gr…

> By destandardising sizes

Oh. I thought there was an outside chance you intended a positive response. Ah well.

> Age, health and status

I can understand age. But wouldn't everyone want to signal good health and high status?

Re: Sizing chaos

#272

Post by dang »

JadeNB wrote: post #248

The original title made clear that this was about sizing for women's clothes. I'm not sure why that was removed; it wasn't clickbaity, and made the title more informative. In fact, I'd argue that just "Sizing chaos" is more clickbaity. (The article itself doesn't seem to have an official title.)

The url includes "womens-sizing" but I don't see that phrase on the page when I view it. "Sizing chaos" is the HTML doc title which is a legit option HN titles (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). That's why we went with that one.

Re: Sizing chaos

#273

Post by altairprime »

bko wrote: post #37
fishtoaster wrote: post #14

This is a great use of data to make a compelling case that sizing sucks for women's clothing! I do wish it attempted to answer the question at the end, though: "Sizes are all made up anyway — why can’t we make them better?" Like, why doesn't the market solve for this? If the median woman can't buy clothing that fits in many brands, surely that's a huge marketing opportunity for any of the thousands of other clothing…

I think the market opportunity can be a standard and eventually get labels to include your standard in addition to their traditional labeling. Figure out the variables (like shape, inseam, width, whatever else) for each article of clothing. Then freely distribute this and begin to catalog popular items. You can crowdsource some of this. The idea is people will look up the clothes as per your scale. Then after you ind…

This works in theory, until you discover as the article did, that all manufacturers use one clothing shape — hourglass — and so if your measurements aren’t “bust == hips, waist := bust - 10” then your search engine finds few or no results.

Re: Sizing chaos

#274

Post by Markoff »

for non-native speakers: tweenager - a child between the ages of about 10 and 14. (Oxford Languages)

tweenager - a young person between the ages of approximately eight and twelve (Cambridge Dictionary)

seems even dictionaries can't decide on the age

Btw S M L sizes are retarded, why they can't just write normal size like 128 (cm), 134, 152 for cm of height as is commonly used in Europe, my wife regularly checks kid sizes since some teenagers are taller than her. Sadly for adults it's more complicated.

I hate buying pants as adult male since it's complete mess, waist size in Europe in inches, length you never know from where it's actually measured, so if shopping online it's always lottery especially since I am relatively skinny and everything is made either for short or tall fatsos, so if I wanna normal length I end up with huge waist.

Re: Sizing chaos

#275

Post by altairprime »

dang wrote: post #272
JadeNB wrote: post #248

The original title made clear that this was about sizing for women's clothes. I'm not sure why that was removed; it wasn't clickbaity, and made the title more informative. In fact, I'd argue that just "Sizing chaos" is more clickbaity. (The article itself doesn't seem to have an official title.)

The url includes "womens-sizing" but I don't see that phrase on the page when I view it. "Sizing chaos" is the HTML doc title which is a legit option HN titles ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... ). That's why we went with that one.

For potentially interesting context, I notice in inspecting past articles that the pudding site regularly uses three different titles between the homepage, the article html title, and the title in-page (if any). In this article’s case, the homepage subtitle is much better than either of the other options:

> The inter-generational struggle to find clothes that fit more than a tiny portion of women

But I’m not sure if that’s a better title for HN or not. I sure like it, though.

Re: Sizing chaos

#276

Post by elil17 »

_main wrote: post #240

If you shop online and use raw measurements, then it will both fit and be available. The real concern I have is how the large majority of westerners are overweight or obese. That's a serious issue way beyond the practicality of buying clothes

You are assuming that listed raw measurements online are accurate (they rarely are).

Re: Sizing chaos

#277

Post by Maxion »

orbisvicis wrote: post #271
roenxi wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Respond how? By destandardising sizes. It isn't that hard to standardise if an industry thinks it'll help them; the article suggests there is already a relevant standards body. These companies are probably doing it for a reason. My guess would be maybe someone doesn't want to be an XXL 18 at J Crew so they can go to Reformation where they are more of a Regular 14. > Signal what? Age, health and status for women. Gr…

> By destandardising sizes Oh. I thought there was an outside chance you intended a positive response. Ah well. > Age, health and status I can understand age. But wouldn't everyone want to signal good health and high status?

> But wouldn't everyone want to signal good health and high status?

The thing with people is that they are all different. There are a lot of people who don't want to be of high status or signal it. There's lots of people who don't really care for health and value other things higher.

Re: Sizing chaos

#278

Post by Markoff »

dboreham wrote: post #36
jedberg wrote: post #16

Women'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…

Mens sizes have changed over time. Go get a vintage t-shirt from the 80s, medium size, and try it on. It'll be the size of a small or xs today.

it's not always necessarily about people being fat but also about style, tighter t-shirts where more in fashion back in 70/80s, not it's more loose style

Re: Sizing chaos

#279

Post by roenxi »

orbisvicis wrote: post #271
roenxi wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Respond how? By destandardising sizes. It isn't that hard to standardise if an industry thinks it'll help them; the article suggests there is already a relevant standards body. These companies are probably doing it for a reason. My guess would be maybe someone doesn't want to be an XXL 18 at J Crew so they can go to Reformation where they are more of a Regular 14. > Signal what? Age, health and status for women. Gr…

> By destandardising sizes Oh. I thought there was an outside chance you intended a positive response. Ah well. > Age, health and status I can understand age. But wouldn't everyone want to signal good health and high status?

> I can understand age. But wouldn't everyone want to signal good health and high status?

Yeah, but generally not with fashion. Male fashion tends not to go to the same sort of lengths to showcase legs/torsos/arms/chest that women's fashion does. For men if they want to signal status they tend to buy a car they can't afford or something.

And male health is one of those areas where it is very complicated. A fat, balding man who smells funny can make up for that with a high income. A fat balding woman who smells funny might be able to do the same thing but I can't help feel sceptical at the idea.

Anyway, long story short, the people who aren't using fashion as signalling can just buy a shirt that fits and move on. It's a shirt. They aren't complicated.

Re: Sizing chaos

#280

Post by galkk »

> Cultural narratives around vanity sizing often square the blame on female shoppers, not brands. Newsweek once called it “self-delusion on a mass scale” because women were more likely to buy items that were labeled as sizes smaller than reality. But there’s more to the story.

> Vanity sizing provides a powerful marketing strategy for brands. Companies found that whenever women needed a size larger than expected, they were less likely to follow through on their purchases. Some could even develop negative associations with the brand and never shop there again. But when manufacturers manipulated sizing labels, leading to a more positive customer experience, brands could maintain a slight competitive edge.

How one can seriously write the same thing twice in form of contradiction and make different conclusion?

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