Clothing sizing in general is just arcane at this point.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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This. I mostly buy size S t-shirts, sometimes M, occassionally XS. I dont even care anymore.
If the shirt isn't xl, I can't raise my hands without showing my belly.
Also if the shirt is bigger than L, I'm swimming in it.
That sounds like a problem a tailor could solve
I have a long torso and broad shoulders, so I have to get xl tall shirts in some brands because most make their standard xl shirts wider but not taller than med and small.
Banana Republic is the shortest length. Hurley is the best length.
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I’m between a medium and a large. More often then not though, I need the shoulder width and arm length of a large, but the cut in the torso of a medium. Clothing manufacturers assume Americans scale horizontally as they scale vertically. This maybe true given our obesity crisis.
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Today years old.
It's also the fact that cup size is not necessarily independent from band size, that's where the trick is. I used to think I'm an A with a high band size as I'm huge with no booba, like a 39A or something but those never fit that well.
According to ABraThatFits methodology I'm actually 36C, which somehow does fit and super well, though by common and dudebro methodology I'm most certainly more of an "A cup" if that makes sense.
It's because whatever maniac invented the sizing scheme decided that every letter represents 2 inches more around your body at the weirdest boobage point than just below it. What a bonkers system! A woman with 38B bras is 38 inches around at the band, and 42 inches around at the girls. Nonsense. The way dudes THINK it works makes so much more sense.
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Have her go and get fitted. Many women don't know what their band/cup size really is.
Also, IMO, women's pant sizes are where the real absurdity in sizes is.
Agree on all points! When I was had my first grownup job I was trying to build up my wardrobe and found a pair of jeans that fit and felt great. Size 3. I went back after another paycheck to get an identical third pair and when I got home, they were practically falling off of me. I had to exchange them for a 1, which was still larger than the size 3s from just a month or two earlier.
But a fitted bra? One of my best purchases ever. Getting in the right size resolved about 70% of my chronic back pain. Fit is different between bra types but decent brands’ sizes are standardized, regardless what OP says.
Not much help to know what cup size you are if the bra companies are only pretending to be standardized
Only knowing your cup size is not enough. You need to know the underbust size as well. A 32D and a 34C have cups with the same volume. Sure, there is still some variance but not as much as I thought before I learned that.
Edit: This calculator and the community of the same name on the-site-that-shall-not-be-named helped me a lot in finding my actual bra size. Now my only problem is that almost no company here has more than two or three bras in that size...
And it is more complicated even than that. I am a small busted woman and yet the best fit I can get is 34D. The 34 makes sense, underbust is 33. The D is what I measure but most have too much room. I still need that size because the circumference of the boobs fits in that wire; any smaller is too narrow.
I think bras need 3 measurements not 2. I need band 34, wire size D, cup capacity closer to C. And there are plenty of women in the opposite situation too, with more projection but smaller circumference.
So the non-standardized sizing is a workaround for that problem.
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Well, today years old. Thanks.
They aren't?
I would assume they're not but that's because I notice that depending on who makes what shoe depends on what size I have. I also see this in pants and shorts for men as well. I just assume nothing is actually standardized due to QA never really catching things.
In theory they're standardized. But in practice, no they're not.
I've been married for 8 years, and I had no idea 😂
Never been underwear shopping with the wife? I usually take my wife once a year. Think of it this way. A good bra is like a good pair of work boots. You get a shit pair and you're in pain every time you wear them. Bras are the same thing.
Yes and no. Sexy underwear, sure, but never a big talk around the vast differences. I told her about this comment, and I got a 10 minute talk about it 😂 no regrets!
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There are plenty of brands that follow mostly standard sizing, as I understand it. But popular brands in the US (like Victoria Secret) generally don’t.
I fell down the r/abrathatfits rabbit hole one day, years ago. It’s fascinating.
I once talked to my girlfriend about bra sizes and how much i don't understand them. Then we both googled bra sizes and how often women wear the wrong size and fit and all. It's a whole science behind it and it's quite interesting. Now, 10 years later i still often think: oh no, she wears a bra that doesn't fit right and probably doesn't even know it.
Yup! “Oh, she should probably go down a band size and up a cup size” popped into my head one day and I laughed at the absurdity.
I introduced my wife to the world of proper bra fit, because she’d never known any of it. No one taught her. Made me feel vaguely guilty of mansplaining, but it helped!
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Men's clothing sizes are a little dumb sometimes but I can usually take a tape measure to my waist and correctly order pants. Your guess is as good as mine what the difference between "boot cut" and "relaxed fit" are, and I would swear T-shirt sizes have shrunk since I was a teenager. As in, I can compare a Medium I've had since the Dubya administration to an XL today. But getting fitted for a suit, they measure me in inches and the clothing is more or less sized in inches.
Women's clothing sizes have had two different ice pick lobotomies. Women come in a wider range of sizes and aspect ratios, women's clothing is pretty much universally designed to fit tighter, but on the rack they're given one meaningless size number. a 12 is bigger than a 10, who knows by how much, and there's nothing on the girl you can measure with a tape to get that number, and there is no standard here at all. Why they haven't revolted I have no idea.
Boot cut means a slightly flared leg (think a very very subtle bell bottom) so that they fit over cowboy or work boots easier.
Relaxed fit means it's made a little bigger in the seat and thighs compared to the same size in a regular fit. The lines/silhouette aren't as clean/nice, but it's comfier; which is why it's called relaxed fit.
I would swear T-shirt sizes have shrunk since I was a teenager.
I thought that too, but it turns out I just got fat
I have size M shirts from high school that fit like an L on the rack today.
It’s been the opposite for women’s clothing in my experience. I’ve had to give up multiple brands as their shirts got too big. Same labeled size, same style, but it’s suddenly 2” wider.
There is a whole NPR episode on women sizing and history of sizing in general.
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Just now.
The cup size SHOULD be the difference in inches between the circumference below the breast and circumference around the breast.
3" difference would be a C cup
5" would be DD.
Why they double up some letters and not others, I couldn't tell you. 🤷🏻♂️
My ex used to sell underwear.
Trying to buy bras for my wife has been an eye opening experience.
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned here yet is the Wild West of standards once you get to big cup sizes. Apparently DD is the same as E, DDD is an F, and I've even seen a DDDD, which would be a G. Depending on cuts, brands, and styles, her size can go from a DD to an I.
Not to mention these things are like $100 for a "cheap" one. The amount of engineering it has to take to design that shit is probably a few years of grad school.
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It was a long time ago that I realized that women’s clothing sizing was largely fiction. Trying to buy clothing for a girlfriend or (later) my wife based on the tag of something they already owned was an exercise in futility.
I just learned today since I've never been compelled to look up any sort of conversion chart, but I had a hunch because dress/pants sizes are all over the place. One brand's mostly-honest 12 is another brand's flattering 4, shit like that
Most of the bras that my girlfriend gets fits on her first try, although she does tend to prefer sister sizes over her real size. If your girlfriend is having issues with bras fitting, it might be worthwhile to read up on how bra sizes are actually calculated and do a measurement yourself. Funny enough, most girls don't seem to know how the bra size system works either and they just get their sizes through trial and error, which seems like what has happened here.
The letter by itself is fundamentally meaningless. A 32D is equivalent to a 34B! And most girls severely underestimate their actual size. What would colloquially be called a B or C is actually an E
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I'm both fat and tall. None of my fucking clothes have consistent sizes that fit. I'm not the least bit surprised that the clothing industry's greatest minds were defeated by breasts.
I really want a law that requires clothing sizes to include actual measurements. And it's insane that I would have to specify that these measurements must be accurate, but the clothing industry has made lying about sizes the norm.
There shouldn't be anything preventing me from figuring out women's bra sizes with a tape measure aside from the fact that I don't know them and they probably don't want a stranger obsessively measuring their boobs.
OP is wrong. Bra size is the ONLY women’s sizing that is related to specific measurements. It can still take a while to find a comfortable fit based on shapes, but the sizes are standardized across good brands.
Starting point to find the size: Measure the rib cage right under the bust. If even, that’s the number; if odd, round up. Measure the largest size around the bust. Subtract underbust from bust measurements. 1” = A, 2” = B, 3=C, 4=D.
It gets confusing from there in the US because instead of going alphabetically, the US just adds a D for every inch after 4 until some arbitrary letter then goes back to the alphabet. Using UK sizes just follows the alphabet and so is very simple.
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I'm gay, so current age I guess
Grade 9- girlfriend at the time was "blessed" so to speak. Learned e women have a much more difficult time finding bras and underwear that "work" than most men do.
Just now