Yes, it has. The problem is that nontrivial clothing requires multidimensional fit which is impractical for mass-produced off-the-rack clothing, and marketing of mass-produced clothes is therefore driven by all kinds of things, none of which is using the well-established standardization and quantification of fit, which is used only by people making bespoke clothing or altering off-the-rack clothes for specific individuals.
Of course, unless it is paired by on-demand alteration, 3D fitting doesn't really address that problem.
But its not meant to (though the for-the-public image may be that), its to deal with the problem that taking clothes to actual fitting rooms increases handling, damage, theft losses, and the resulting policing and remerchandising is a major source of labor requirements for shops.
For the Gap, the problem this hopes to solve, or at least mitigate, is “retail employees”.
Of course the garment industry is still heavily reliant on human labor for manufacture and the model I describe would really only work if the process is basically fully automated. But it would be nice if my clothes didn’t rely on marginalized labor in Bangladesh so I’d like a fully automated source.
Anyway you’re not wrong that it’s impractical with the current way of doing things, but it seems fully automated clothing production is advancing, so perhaps in 20 years it will be possible.
It most certainly has not. Even in men's legwear where your clothing is more or less fully defined by two measurements (waist circumference and inseam length), there are lots of variations between brands for garments with the same nominal size.
I have 2 pairs of billabong board shorts that are slightly too big and fall down if I don't cinch the drawstrings extra tight. Size 34 waist.
I have another 2 pairs of o'neill shorts that fit perfectly and don't fall down even if I don't lace up the drawstring at all. Size 34 waist.
Let's not even get into women's clothing where you can have such ill-defined terms like "size zero".
It has, but, again, mass market clothing doesn’t use it. Bespoke clothing and tailoring does.
> Even in men's legwear where your clothing is more or less fully defined by two measurements (waist circumference and inseam length),
No, those are what mass-market panta tend to use as nominal size dimensions, with variations in the relation of those and other standard dimensions being brand or style variations (where there are options for some of them within a brand, typically multiple of them are collapsed together under another single axis like slim fit/classic fit/loose fit, which tends to lump ankle)
The standard measurements for men’s pants include all of:
waist circumference front and back crotch length hip circumference waist to knee length knee circumference thigh circumference calf circumference ankle circumference waist to ankle length inseam
(sometimes, some of these will be estimated based on visual inspection and the other measurements.)
> there are lots of variations between brands for garments with the same nominal size.
Yes, mass market clothing nominal sizes have no consistent relationship to even the things the subset of measures they noninally represent.
> Let's not even get into women's clothing where you can have such ill-defined terms like "size zero".
The only difference between women’s dress sizes and men’s pants sizes is that the former is a one-dimensional arbitrary ordinal category and the latter is two dimensional, and pretends to a (false) correspondence to a standard length measurement.
size zero at least makes sense if it's the smallest, and they're using zero based indexing. It really gets ridiculous when they have size 00.
More casual button-downs are also very frustrating, as sleeve length and chest circumference aren't provided accurately for S vs M vs L
If you want an extra shock: measure your waist. It's not 34 inches!
This is mainly due to cheap fabrics stretching unevenly (roll to roll difference and beginning of the roll can stretch differently from the end) and if you cut them by pressing through a thick stack the ones at different spots in the stack stretch differently during the cut and thus end up different size even if "cut" to the same size.
Then after every shirt made, it's tested against the B26 - B34 (since it's probably somewhere in there) and then labelled as a fit for B29.
Then I just go shopping for B29s.
I'd argue men have about 4 primary body shapes (roughly, height:shoulders:waist:hips), within which most are +/- a bit.
Women have... a lot more.
I had this problem when I was younger with an outlier waist/inseam ratio. I was only one inseam size out of "normal" but had to catalog order my pants. I wonder how it would work now with modern supply chain efficiencies. Back then I could rely on a warehouse somewhere having my size, but just-in-time may not allow room for that.
I love the idea though. As someone who rarely finds a t-shirt where I like the fit (either too tight or too long), I'd love to just have something I could count on. I can't even rely on just getting the same size from the same store each time.
Then the clothing designer would input B29 and it would adjust all sorts of things and print out a pattern. Then the clothing designer could "test fit" the final shirt on a really cool adjustomatic mannequin made of weird pistons and balloons. Ok that last part is unlikely to happen but it sounds awesome.
Lovely idea but what do the poor fools do whose weights are going up and down? I mean I know that's not 80% of the population on a given year but there is some value to being able to buy just a few garments at a time that fit approximately correctly right now, even if they won't really in another six months.
Going in to a store would seem absolutely insane if you could just order tons of stuff in your size and it all fits and you would not have to make returns.
Pick two.
Some companies do try to address this to a degree with slim or athletic cuts, and yes a tailor could take you the rest of the way ‘mostly’ there, but the future of clothing is 3D scanning and printing.
The sizes vary within brands themselves.
Traditionally the solution was to get a tailor take your measurements and make a pattern for you and cut from cloth to make you a garment. Obviously, in today's day and age, that gets a bit expensive for most people.
https://www.indochino.com/suits/fit
That one is a "measure at home" affair, but I've also heard tell of ones where there's a pop up at a co-working space or whatever, and you go get measured, pick your fabrics, and get the shirts in the mail a few weeks later.
Cost-wise, it's definitely more than getting them at a department store, but it's not ridiculously more. Think like 2-3x rather than 10x.
That said, a tailor will make you pose properly and not slouch or droop your shoulder, so they would take better measurements. Presumably, SW could correct for bad posture as well.
Manufacturing at scale is currently impossible.
Tailoring is basically robotics' worst nightmare: input material with varying characteristics from batch to batch, delicate materials, multiple different motions and tasks, a non-reducible movement and orientation space (e.g. sew a hem along a curve), and a complex mapping between physical tasks and end result (different stitch on seam = different motion).
We'll get there (and if it weren't for low cost labor, would already be there for t-shirts). But it's really hard.
I also think what you’re describing could be easily solved with more measurements of clothing you’re considering.
The issue is it just doesn’t scale well abd is limited by types of garments on offer, no standardized way to share measurements with other manufacturers, and requires we redo the process or for me to ‘guess’ at adjustments if my body changes in any material ways - they only come to major cities once a quarter or so.
The GP is more referring to companies who deliberately don't conform to standards. Best example of this is women's clothing that alter sizes so they are more appealing to women who don't traditionally fit that size number.
TL;DR - "Omg I finally fit in a size 2 dress" is a huge selling point, even if its not categorically true.
But as someone who is on the shorter side with an athletic body type, almost no clothing produced today (aside from high end made in US brands) fits me at all. Vintage stuff does. No amount of standardization will get around that. I have to pay more for tailoring, getting custom made, or spending tons of time searching out boutique brands that work for my body type.
What I’m suggesting fixes it all.
This sort of thing has been being talked about for 20+ years. The problems include that you're probably never going to get to the equivalent of a tailored suit--even after taking all their measurements, tailors often will make some final adjustments. On the other hand, most people are fine with their day to day polo shirts, T-shirts, and trousers being off the rack without paying double/triple or whatever for customization.
Sort of, but it's all fake if you don't have the right QC strictness at manufacture. People like to joke about "fake size numbers" and "S/M/L" and "different style cuts", but forget about that and focus on waist and inseam measurements for a moment.
Men's pants have been labeled with waist and inseam measurements in inches forever, and, differences person to person and brand to brand entirely aside, the same brand of pants in the same style in the same color with the same size label on the same day can have different actual waist circumferences by more than half an inch so that one pair will fit _you_ and another won't fit _you_ because their assembly tolerance is higher than your fit tolerance.
I bought a suit a while back - they tailored it (pants and jacket) for <$20. This is "really expensive" if it is a $10 t-shirt, but not that bad if it is an $80 point-down shirt, and even reasonable if it is a $200 pant/jacket combo
I was mostly referring to day-to-day wear that's $10-40 or so off the rack.
I'm selfishly disappointed China's takeover of Hong Kong because it gives me very mixed feeling about getting suits from there. They do amazing work, but supporting them is, in a sense, supporting China's takeover, even if the shop had nothing to do with it.
And one can specify their body measurements all they like, but it barely helps selecting a size online or even in store.
Finding someone that is average on just four or five dimensions is extremely rare. Bucketing people into a handful of clusters and taking those averages is only a marginal improvement. Brands standardizing to those same clusters make it impossible for many people to find fitting clothes.
It’s just like shoes. For a given length, at most about 30-40% of the foot widths can be accommodated without offering multiple widths. And most shoes only come in one width.