<story><title>Are your pants lying to you?  An investigation</title><url>http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/pants-size-chart-090710</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>btilly</author><text>I&apos;ve wondered about this.  I&apos;ve worn a 34&quot;-34&quot; pant for the last 20 years, and I know my waist has expanded over that time.  It just didn&apos;t add up.&lt;p&gt;On fixing the meaning of the sizing, I&apos;m reminded of someone I knew who took a sewing class in highschool.  They started with patterns from the 1950s, and despite the teacher warning the students how different the sizings would be, virtually nobody managed to make clothing that they could squeeze into.&lt;p&gt;Personally I think the best solution is to make it a matter of law that the sizing be accurate.  Everyone would hear that the sizing changed dramatically, there would be a brief transition, and we&apos;d soon get used to accurate sizes.  Drawing it out gradually would force people to keep on relearning their size, and overall would be more disruptive.</text></comment>
<story><title>Are your pants lying to you?  An investigation</title><url>http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/pants-size-chart-090710</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Maciek416</author><text>This could present a significant barrier to reliable online shopping for clothes. It&apos;ll be interesting to see in the coming years, as more of these retailers offer online ordering (GAP is finally offering their catalog to us Canadians, for example), whether fitting will be normalized somehow, or whether each retailer will instead stick to a specific size translation table as I&apos;ve seen some places.&lt;p&gt;Either that or someone will have to build a website or tool that aggregates the investigative work for us. I know I&apos;d pay a small premium to eliminate the guesswork.&lt;p&gt;(EDIT: I wish there was a way to OpenID-ify personal body measurements for this purpose so every clothing site I visited could automatically select the best-fitting clothes for me. GAP small/medium t-shirts are wildly different from Threadless&apos; small/medium American Apparel Ts)</text></comment>