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!
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”.