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Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

(sorry to duplicate my comment here, but it's relevant)

It's not just a matter of vanity, it's a matter of extremely loose tolerances in manufacturing.

I've found that even within a single store, looking at the same model of Levi's jeans, I need to try each individual pair. I always wear the same thing: Levi's 505 34W 30L. But I find that individual specimens with this exact tag can be as much as an inch different in every dimension: waist diameter, inseam length, and even leg diameter at the hem.

This being the case, it's not possible to say that a given item is the right fit, without actually trying it.

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It's not loose tolerances in manufacturing--it's just shitty quality control.

Sorry to be so vulgar, but it's true. Tons of boutiques and higher-end clothing labels have almost ZERO variance in sizing. Some of them hand-make their clothing, sure, but most don't.

Regardless, though, you're right--there's too much variance in sizing for mainstream brands. This problem really hinders any type of "OpenID-for-clothing" startup.

But if you have a clothing portal that knows your every dimension, part of the service you can sell is that you measure every single item, ensuring a good fit (regardless of the size tag). Whether you match them up to the customer on shipping or to the database on receiving is up to you.

I have no idea if that would be scalable, but it would certainly help with customer retention and goodwill.

You could always pitch it to a wealthier crowd to limit the amount of customers...

It can’t be that expensive (relative to making the clothing) to measure each article precisely and then bin them by actual size.

I've also found that Levi's have become so bad in this regard that I had to change to Lee's which seem much better. I think Levi's quality control went away about when they started selling to Walmart.

This is valuable information. Do you have any insight into the manufacturing process for garments? I don't yet know enough about the clothing industry and manufacturing so any data points are very welcome. I firmly believe that problems like these must be surmountable. We have the technology to build devices with tolerances measured in microns. Surely we can find a way to get clothes to fit.

It simply isn't practical. We have technology to build devices with micron tolerances, but they cost millions of dollars. Sure, you could build a device to sew a pair of jeans with millimeter tolerances, but you'd have to be so precise that you'd have to charge thousands for a single pair. That's not even looking at the material itself. Different fabrics can have different tolerances for stretching in all directions.

It is a big tradeoff between accuracy and cost. If you want to have the measurements be hyper-accurate, be prepared to spend a ton.

Large brands like Levi's generally use several contractors, and the quality (and therefore fit tolerance) inevitably varies from contractor to contractor. Chances are that was a bad batch and/or you were shopping in an outlet mall (where they send a lot of the odds and sods).

Perhaps, they should find a way to (re)measure the final product, and re-label as necessary.

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