<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><item><author>CWuestefeld</author><text>(sorry to duplicate my comment here, but it&apos;s relevant)&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s not just a matter of vanity, it&apos;s a matter of extremely loose tolerances in manufacturing.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve found that even within a single store, looking at the same model of Levi&apos;s jeans, I need to try each individual pair. I always wear the same thing: Levi&apos;s 505 34W 30L. But I find that individual specimens with this exact tag can be as much as an inch different in every dimension: waist diameter, inseam length, and even leg diameter at the hem.&lt;p&gt;This being the case, it&apos;s not possible to say that a given item is the right fit, without actually trying it.</text></item><item><author>LogicHoleFlaw</author><text>Wow. I had a long, detailed conversation last night with my roommate/potential co-founder about doing EXACTLY this. The way sizing is handled in the clothing industry is ridiculous for women especially, but for men as well according to this article.&lt;p&gt;The basic technology product is software that, given information about your body shape, can produce a listing of clothing that &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; fit you. As far as we can tell this does not yet exist. When the customer can trust that the clothes will fit, then they can shop based on style, fashion, price, or any other number of more interesting criteria rather than worrying about getting the right size or cut.&lt;p&gt;If you pair this technology with a customer-centered online retail environment then I think you can create a lot of value. Zappos has shown that you can make buying articles of clothing online work, with their famous customer support and return policies.&lt;p&gt;The concept of requiring a customer to consult a sizing translation table &lt;i&gt;per label&lt;/i&gt; or even &lt;i&gt;per garment&lt;/i&gt; just to find clothes that fit well flabbergasts me. But we haven&apos;t found any better solutions on offer.&lt;p&gt;This all fits in with Request For Startup 2: New Paths Through Product Space. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ycombinator.com/rfs2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ycombinator.com/rfs2.html&lt;/a&gt; Nobody is selling clothing based on what fits the individual shopper. We want to make an online storefront that only offers clothing that will fit &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of negative knock-on effects from the current way clothes shopping is done. People agonize over sizing and equate their waistband with their self-worth. That&apos;s ridiculous. Every person will look best and be most comfortable in clothing that matches their actual shape, regardless of what number is on the label. Especially if that number is a lie!&lt;p&gt;Clothes shopping changed drastically starting in about the mid 1800s through the 1920s with the advent of mass-produced garments. Before that each item was made individually. After that, confusing labels, garments designed to fit the &quot;average&quot; person to minimize the need for alterations, changing demographics, and vanity sizing turned the whole system into an incredible morass. It wasn&apos;t always this way, and it shouldn&apos;t have to be.&lt;p&gt;The article suggests that government regulation of sizing labels is the solution to the problem of ill-fitting clothing. What the author does not mention is that this was tried in the past! That system fell apart and you can read about its failure from the NIST: &lt;a href=&quot;http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/apparel/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/apparel/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I posit that smarter technology which can match the clothing to the person is a superior solution.&lt;p&gt;There&apos;s a lot of pain involved in clothes shopping today. We want to fix that.&lt;p&gt;If any hackers here, especially women, have some thoughts to share on this topic I dearly want to hear them, whether in a post here or in a private email. My address is in my profile.&lt;p&gt;We are seriously considering applying to YCombinator with this proposal.</text></item><item><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></item></parent_chain><comment><author>achompas</author><text>It&apos;s not loose tolerances in manufacturing--it&apos;s just shitty quality control.&lt;p&gt;Sorry to be so vulgar, but it&apos;s true. Tons of boutiques and higher-end clothing labels have almost ZERO variance in sizing. Some of them hand-make their clothing, sure, but most don&apos;t.&lt;p&gt;Regardless, though, you&apos;re right--there&apos;s too much variance in sizing for mainstream brands. This problem really hinders any type of &quot;OpenID-for-clothing&quot; startup.</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><item><author>CWuestefeld</author><text>(sorry to duplicate my comment here, but it&apos;s relevant)&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s not just a matter of vanity, it&apos;s a matter of extremely loose tolerances in manufacturing.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve found that even within a single store, looking at the same model of Levi&apos;s jeans, I need to try each individual pair. I always wear the same thing: Levi&apos;s 505 34W 30L. But I find that individual specimens with this exact tag can be as much as an inch different in every dimension: waist diameter, inseam length, and even leg diameter at the hem.&lt;p&gt;This being the case, it&apos;s not possible to say that a given item is the right fit, without actually trying it.</text></item><item><author>LogicHoleFlaw</author><text>Wow. I had a long, detailed conversation last night with my roommate/potential co-founder about doing EXACTLY this. The way sizing is handled in the clothing industry is ridiculous for women especially, but for men as well according to this article.&lt;p&gt;The basic technology product is software that, given information about your body shape, can produce a listing of clothing that &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; fit you. As far as we can tell this does not yet exist. When the customer can trust that the clothes will fit, then they can shop based on style, fashion, price, or any other number of more interesting criteria rather than worrying about getting the right size or cut.&lt;p&gt;If you pair this technology with a customer-centered online retail environment then I think you can create a lot of value. Zappos has shown that you can make buying articles of clothing online work, with their famous customer support and return policies.&lt;p&gt;The concept of requiring a customer to consult a sizing translation table &lt;i&gt;per label&lt;/i&gt; or even &lt;i&gt;per garment&lt;/i&gt; just to find clothes that fit well flabbergasts me. But we haven&apos;t found any better solutions on offer.&lt;p&gt;This all fits in with Request For Startup 2: New Paths Through Product Space. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ycombinator.com/rfs2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ycombinator.com/rfs2.html&lt;/a&gt; Nobody is selling clothing based on what fits the individual shopper. We want to make an online storefront that only offers clothing that will fit &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of negative knock-on effects from the current way clothes shopping is done. People agonize over sizing and equate their waistband with their self-worth. That&apos;s ridiculous. Every person will look best and be most comfortable in clothing that matches their actual shape, regardless of what number is on the label. Especially if that number is a lie!&lt;p&gt;Clothes shopping changed drastically starting in about the mid 1800s through the 1920s with the advent of mass-produced garments. Before that each item was made individually. After that, confusing labels, garments designed to fit the &quot;average&quot; person to minimize the need for alterations, changing demographics, and vanity sizing turned the whole system into an incredible morass. It wasn&apos;t always this way, and it shouldn&apos;t have to be.&lt;p&gt;The article suggests that government regulation of sizing labels is the solution to the problem of ill-fitting clothing. What the author does not mention is that this was tried in the past! That system fell apart and you can read about its failure from the NIST: &lt;a href=&quot;http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/apparel/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/apparel/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I posit that smarter technology which can match the clothing to the person is a superior solution.&lt;p&gt;There&apos;s a lot of pain involved in clothes shopping today. We want to fix that.&lt;p&gt;If any hackers here, especially women, have some thoughts to share on this topic I dearly want to hear them, whether in a post here or in a private email. My address is in my profile.&lt;p&gt;We are seriously considering applying to YCombinator with this proposal.</text></item><item><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></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Splines</author><text>But if you have a clothing portal that knows your every dimension, part of the service you can sell is that you measure every single item, ensuring a good fit (regardless of the size tag).  Whether you match them up to the customer on shipping or to the database on receiving is up to you.&lt;p&gt;I have no idea if that would be scalable, but it would certainly help with customer retention and goodwill.</text></comment>