skirtcafe.org

I'm going to break one of my own rules and link to the Daily Mail (I saw this news in The Times, but it sits behind a paywall).

In an attempt to prevent the very high return rate of clothing purchased online, a group of UK retailers are going to try to do a big survey and agree on a standardised set of clothing sizes.

There are already so many standards in this field, just agree on a standard and stick to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothing_sizes

Those standards should have the ability to cater for the evolution of the human body due to changing food patterns and natural evolution. You don't adjust your standards to this, you just get clothes with different numbers or letters on the label.

For years, when I was shopping for trousers (or suits), they had to change the waist band and the legs. Because of my biking, my thighs and behind was more muscular than people with my body shape. I needed one size up and they took in about an inch at the waist and an inch from the legs. After age 50 and becoming heavier, younger people became more heavy too and I could fit in those modified sizings because they bended the rules a little.

My comment - Certainly ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL !

It'll never happen. Women are so used the the inconsistencies that another new, more logical system would just confuse them. It won't us men because those of us here are already used to the black art and the rest of the men never actually read the women's sizes to know what they meant. The only thing they could visualise would be bra sizes. Anybody knows what a 36C represents and a 38DD is .... Just being me at my most politically incorrect!

Seriously, for skirts they had a system that worked. Take the waist size and subtract 20 so a 34 waist became a size 14. Didn't work for the dresses as you are dealing with two measurements that won't necessarily have any relationship to each other.

Why not do the obvious. If your waist is 32", call it 32". It works for jeans and even pants I recently discovered. I can pick a 33X30 or a 34X30 jeans and without fitting at the shop, I know it fits me reasonable. There must be some idiocy in people because why would you code a drill with a letter if you can state the diameter in inches or millimeter?
If you know your main body measurements then you can check the label and be sure it fits or is not too small.
For a few centuries professionals are making clothes so by now they must know that there is a certain relationship between measurements of body parts. If you can buy patterns for a range of sizes, use one or more crucial measurments in real life units that everybody can measure on themselves.