True Fit partners with several stores. You go on a store's web site (for example, macys.com), and you tell True Fit about some clothing you already have that fits well (brand, size, style). Based on that, it refers to its database to recommend the best size of the product you're considering now, and it tells you whether it thinks it will be "snug", "true to you", or "loose".
Basically it just formalizes the kind of knowledge that shoppers use about how brand A tends to run small, brand B runs large, brand C is aimed at young people so its shirts are more tailored, brand D is aimed at older people and their shirts are more "generous" in the waist, etc.
Their web site calls it the "Fashion Genome™", which is a "comprehensive, normalized fashion graph".
I worked at Levi’s Corp for 3 years and was surprised to learn that clothes have large tolerances in sizes to keep costs down.
True fit says you should select a size based on the size you wear in another brand. That won’t work because no brands have consistent sizing. Even if a brand used extremely tight size tolerances, brands actively size up and down their clothes based on the whims of merchants.
The solution is to just buy 3 sizes of each item you want and select the best fit and return the rest.
Yeah, that's the main problem with this. If you're buying higher-end stuff with tighter tolerances, just providing a set of measurements can work. There's a whole industry of tailors in India and Hong Kong who sell made-to-measure dress shirts to Westerners over the internet.
There's not a directory or anything it seems like.
I tried visiting several sites and got these results:
Works for me: Macy's, J.Crew, JCPenney
Doesn't work: Kohl's, Dockers, Lands' End, Ralph Lauren
In all cases, I picked a random (except for avoiding store brands) men's casual shirt and looked on the details page near where you select a size.
The worst offender is "Old Navy" where a 36" is actually a whopping 41 inches. It seems like men won't buy pants that are labeled over 39 inches, so as sizes go up from 30 inches, the "vanity" excess goes up exponentially.
See: https://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a8386/pants-size-...
they used to be, but these days a "size 38" designation doesn't carry any more actual meaning than women's clothing sizes like "size 0"
i noticed that a certain jean i buy fit consistently only within a given dye and wash. darker pair or different wash fit differently.
I'm talking about the exact same dye btw. Like the same color, number, everything. Only difference is sizes. I've gotten smaller sizes an inch larger than the "larger" sizes for the exact same jeans. It's ridiculous.
of course they can! those jeans cost double.
it’s not a matter of incompetence or don’t care. it’s a matter of production efficiency.
as for otherwise identical jeans being different sizes, that’s also a matter of consistency of the raw material. if you want high consistency it costs more. consumers aren’t willing to bear that cost.
With shoes there is at least consistency because it seems like it became a penis enlargement thing there. On some brands my size grew from 43 to 47 in the recent years.
There was a 5 cm (2 inch) difference.
Pair that with covid not letting you try things on and it just plain sucks. Sometimes I have to try shotgunning it so I'm not making 3 trips to the store just to try a new number.
This is a problem that should have been solved years ago. You should be able to measure yourself very accurately and thoroughly, keep it on some sort of file that you can share what you need, and then use tools on the online sites to learn exactly how their products will fit.