I heard my sister say “Yeah I usually wear a double zero” and it was at that moment I realized there is absolutely no regulation of women’s clothing, only chaos.
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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Very interesting article. I sometimes have to buy clothes for my elderly mobility-impaired aunt. At first I thought I could just go buy a bunch of "Size (whatever)" but as this article says that doesn't work. So I took the pants that fit her best, measured it all over with a tape-measure, and went into the store. That STILL didn't work because some pants "sit higher/lower" or had elastic that changed the way it fit.
When I was a kid we didn't have a lot of money and clothes were more expensive. So various members of our extended family would make clothes for us (sewing or knitting). I now appreciate how awesome that was.
Women's clothing is a nightmare and every time I must interact with it makes me want to throw all clothing into the ocean and demand sackcloth for coverings.
As a father with a tween daughter, I second this motion. "Fashion" will mean tying a cord around the waist.
It seems like the sizes have stuck with a normal BMI assumption where that's not the case anymore and most people are overweight so can't find clothes that fit them well without going into plus-sized clothing (which is less fashionable of course).
I dated a girl and she was like a size 1 or 0 or something and even had to shop in the childrens section because of her height.
Sort of a naive take but it seems like you could mandate objective measurements on clothing like we have ingredient lists on food.
Even in men's sizes where the waist is explicitly stated in a numerical measurement. And the manufacturers still manage to fuck it up!
I may be an outlier cause I'm 6'6 ~265 lbs., but I certain brands I know 34 inch waist will be fine, but most others are a complete crap shoot.
I'm 5' 11" and 175lbs, I wore 34" pants for most of my adult life. Recently, the past few years, I need 33 or 32 inch pants or they're falling off my hips. Same with shirts, I've been a medium my entire life, finding myself buying smalls lately.
it would be great. my partner works in fashion design and trying to learn more about plus size pattern making. bodies are not uniform and basically each body grows in different directions, so it's very challenging to make clothing patterns that fit everyone since they also need to be scaled differently depending on each person.
They have started to, kind of. Some brands of jeans I buy have inches on the size. Saying that, there is still variation even within brand. Jeans may be a size 4 and a 26 inch waist but I’ve also seen a size 6 as a 29. On top of that, if you know your measurements and you try these on they all fit differently which is confusing. Understandably there is some variation, but I mean by entire inches on supposed same sized pants. I don’t want to wear a 28 inch when I buy a size 4, but sometimes that’s how they feel. So trying everything on is still obligatory.
I'm not gonna complain about most men's clothes being cut for fat people anymore.
I'm still gonna complain. Ive got a L that fits perfectly and a XXXL that makes me look like Harold from Hey Arnold. Lucky for me my gender doesnt store such personal worth in size like that.
Didnt pay enough attention to the actual information, because its too indepth for a topic I'm not really interested in, but it was a pretty neat experience. Very well presented.
Post more stuff like this that you find please id love to see something I'm interested in