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Tips, tricks, and advice on getting a sewn product idea into development and manufacture.
Heather Zager: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to today's podcast. My name is Heather Zager. I am the host of this podcast series and founder of Made Apparel Services.
Heather Zager: [00:00:11] Hi, Heather here from Made Apparel Services, welcome back to my channel. In this episode, which is the third of a four part series called Concept to Customer, I'm going to talk about size and fit. Before I start, I should mention that if you haven't listened to the other two podcasts, don't fret. These aren't in any particular order. It's just a series of podcasts that I've created to help sort through some common misconceptions that new designers tend to have, and I numbered them based only on the fact that I could narrow them into four categories. And those categories are: Design Concepting, Material Sourcing, Size and Fit and, yet to come, Types of Manufacturers. Let's start by talking about what fit is. First of all, it's relative. For an individual, it depends on their particular preferences and style and how they want to look or feel. For a clothing company, they may have their own vision of how their customer is shaped and sized, and they will fit to that vision. Vanity sizing is another relative aspect of fit. This is where the labeled size of a garment decreases, despite the garment itself not changing at all in size. In other words, a smaller size label is known to boost the self-esteem of the customer. Thus, a brand gains customer loyalty and sells more product because the customer feels better that they are buying a smaller size label.
Heather Zager: [00:01:35] If vanity sizing is still a little bit confusing to you, you can just Google it and you will get a lot of information about vanity sizing and what it is. Technically speaking though, the goal of fit is comfort, and a good fitting garment tends to be a balance of three things: Function, which is the purpose of the garment. Form, which is its shape and silhouette. And its features, these are the things that make the garment design, such as a zip up hoodie versus a pullover. Let me use a raincoat as an example to explain how all three components work together. It has a 'function' to keep you dry. Its 'form' may be as a poncho instead of a jacket, and its 'features' would be having a warm lining, interior pockets, and maybe an integrated stuffed sack. You may notice I left out material as any part of this equation, and that is because material choice can affect any one of the three components, entirely shifting the design intention. For example, it's possible that the only feature that separates a cheap poncho in your disaster kit from an expensive one is the use of a high quality rainproof material. Additionally, if you change the material to a windproof fleece, it is no longer serving the function of waterproofing, but rather warmth. Finally, if you choose a lightweight waterproof material over a heavy and thick one, the form changes and it becomes more drapey and graceful and perhaps more of an elegant look. Of course, there are degrees of variation and overlap in all of this, but it's a generalization to help you understand. The idea is that fit is about comfort, but comfort can be a bit hard to fit.
Heather Zager: [00:03:21] Now that we understand fit a bit better, let's talk about what size is. That's actually quite a bit easier to comprehend than fit. Size is simply about taking that function, form and feature formula and applying it across a range such as extra small to extra large. That's it. However, people tend to think sizing is just scaling, which oversimplifies things and causes misconceptions. In reality, the body grows at different rates in different areas. For example, a bust circumference from a size 8 to a size 10 may grow by two inches, but the waist only grows by one inch, so scaling a pattern by 5% is going to grow the design too fast at the waist in relation to the bust. Also, adults don't continue to grow in height, so if you scale a pattern vertically in addition to horizontally, the garment is gaining in length when the body isn't. There's a bit of a catch to this that I'll explain in a moment, though. A way to understand sizing in more detail is to imagine for a moment that you line up five people side by side. They are, in order, ranging in size from extra small on the left to extra large on the right. If you put a medium sized shirt on all of them, the only one that will look correct is the medium person. The shirt will start to look too large on the smaller sizes and too small on the larger sizes. This probably makes sense to you, but what you see as too tight or too loose, a pattern maker sees as stretch lines, wrinkles and bunching. They then translate this into an amount and a location on the pattern to fix. It is important to understand that size is about that t-shirt looking exactly the same across every body in a range. If the length of the shirt lands at crotch level on the medium, then it needs to land at crotch level on the extra small and extra large too, while also eliminating stretch, wrinkles, bunching and so on. That catch I mentioned a moment ago about adding length, the human adult doesn't grow in height, but increasing circumference to a garment can give the perception of length because it is no longer hanging up on the body and the garment drops. You never actually added length to the pattern. On other occasions, though, length indeed needs to be added because as the body gains in circumference, this takes up distance lengthwise and the hem raises.
Heather Zager: [00:06:01] Knowing when to add circumference and when to add length is what the trained eye of a pattern grader sees when analyzing fit. Now, you begin to see how size and fit relate, but it doesn't really tell us what a size itself is. Obviously it starts with body measurements, but who's? So to understand this, we first need a little background. If you think about the earliest clothing that humans ever wore, it would be something like a loincloth. But the concept of size actually starts with the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, where some form of tailoring was used. At this point in our history, a garment was simply sized and fitted to an individual person. However, a toga isn't hard to make, so those methods were rudimentary. Although if you read about togas, they actually have quite a bit of history, so I won't simplify them too much. Since the toga, humans advanced quite a bit. Fabrics got more complex and creative, and designs became more involved. Garment creation thus became something of a craft that required a skill, and that skill was pattern making. Now this type of pattern making was called bespoke tailoring. And if you're not familiar with bespoke, it's basically custom clothing. It involves measuring a specific person and fitting the garment over repeated sessions to that person. However, it is time consuming and expensive even today. Historically, though, bespoke was only available to the wealthy and elite.
Heather Zager: [00:07:24] Bespoke tailoring carried on for hundreds of years, maybe even thousands, until war eventually spearheaded a movement away from this methodology. As armies were growing in size and complexity, military leaders began to realize that everyone showing up in their own clothing didn't make sense. First of all, it was sort of hard to tell each other apart from the enemy, but it was also hard to recognize rank, to know who was in charge. So getting organized through uniforms was the solution. And it brought other benefits too, like creating a sense of unity and pride. Unfortunately, making that many of the same garment quickly couldn't be done through bespoke tailoring. Pattern makers still needed body measurements to create patterns, so the solution was to use average body measurements and then break them down into sizes. Now pattern makers could pre-make clothes while the army got the speed of construction to outfit everyone quickly. As humans evolved, we invented concepts such as mass production, which lowered the cost of making things, and department stores which made access to those made things easier, and things grew together to create better and better standards for clothing so that everyone had access to affordable clothing that fit well enough. This is what we know today as ready-to-wear, and has been the way we've created garments ever since. You can imagine that the original standard for bodies would have been fairly rudimentary, so there were still some issues with fit. Also, overall body shapes and sizes have changed over hundreds of years, so standards, too, are constantly changing.
Heather Zager: [00:09:00] This in itself has created inconsistencies and confusion with the ready-to-wear methodology. But a pivotal moment to correct this was in 1898, when the US government created the ASTM, which is the American Society for Testing and Materials, to try and make more sense out of a constantly changing world, no pun intended. The way this was approached was essentially through something called size studies. Thousands and thousands of measurements are taken from set locations on the bodies of thousands and thousands of individuals, who were roughly separated into categories such as men, women, and children. After all the measurements were taken, each point of measure was averaged for that category of body, and from there, size ranges were also extrapolated. Since 1898, these studies have, of course, gotten better and more complex, but the idea is to keep doing them so the standards continue to reflect the current average consumer. Incidentally, the history of the US ASTM and what it does today is quite fascinating. If you want to read more, I've put a link in the show notes.
Heather Zager: [00:10:09] There is also a private company called Alvanon that takes size studies a step further. Unlike the US ASTM, they only study body shapes and sizes, so their work is more extensive, ongoing and current. They don't just have men, but big and tall men, classic men, North American men and athletic men. Women and children have their own subdivisions too. Additionally, they do studies for other countries such as Europe, Asia, China, and Japan. They also create physical dress forms to represent each of these categories and types, and do them in a size range. One last thing, not to complicate size studies too much, but it's important to know that private clothing companies will not only follow these standards, but build on them in ways specific to their own target market. So they're not just using Alvanon or US ASTM, but more of an enhanced and personalized version of those standards. Now, all of these standards are very close, so it explains why a medium t-shirt from one brand can be quite similar to a medium from another, but it can also explain why two mediums could be quite different too. Keep in mind, fluctuations in fit can be complicated by cheap construction versus something manufactured with more care and thus more cost. Now, all of this is just to say that while clothing is made to a standard like medium or big and tall, your pattern maker needs the body measurements that make that standard. Otherwise they're forced to fill in the blanks and you could quite possibly get a not very well fitted garment for your target market. And I'll give you an example.
Heather Zager: [00:11:47] I onboarded a new client recently who just needed sewn samples, and she provided the patterns. I asked her who the patterns were built from, the body size and the standard, and she didn't know so we asked her pattern maker. Her pattern maker sent me a Brazilian measurement chart. So I asked her, is your target market in Brazil? And she said, well, no. So we had to spend a minute looking at an Alvanon size chart and compare that to the Brazilian one, to see how far off her measurements may be for her garment and what they were patterned to. It turns out, the measurements on the Brazilian chart were actually larger. So since she's making a line of children's clothing, we'll be okay, because larger for kids is going to be a little bit better. So nothing had to change, but it was enlightening for her to realize that she never even knew to clarify what body type, style, size chart and measurements were being used to create her patterns. So you're a brand and now you know you need to know some standards before you start creating your designs. So the next question is, where do you find these standards? So I'll tell you a couple of places that you don't want to go because this is sort of the common misconception. Size charts don't count, it's not enough information. So even if you have a brand that you like the fit of, it's supplemental. It can be helpful, but it's just not going to have enough information in it.
Heather Zager: [00:13:17] For example, they usually just say bust, waist and hip. And if you're trying to create something with a sleeve, you don't have a sleeve length, so you've got to find that standard somewhere. So size charts just don't necessarily work because they don't have enough information. You also can't be the fit model, that's too specific. Even if you have all your measurements, you have to compare that against something to know where you fit into the standard. And then current samples, obviously they can work, but they aren't body measurements. So you have to sort of backtrack to what the measurements of the body are. But also if you just have a t-shirt and someday your brand wants to do pants, you're gonna have to find another sample, and then will that sample be the same standard for the bottom half as it will be for the upper half? All of these, at the end of the day, aren't horrible if you want to start a brand and you don't have the base body size. But, if you are listening to this podcast, you can just go straight to the standard source and get it right the first time, which is what I try to educate people when I talk with them on consults.
Heather Zager: [00:14:16] Once you have chosen a standard body, you'll have a much better fitting design. However, at some point you'll need to fit your design to a real body. Now, if you're an established brand, you would hold a fit session. And a fit session is something that typically involves a team of people, including the pattern maker, a sample sewer, a fit model, and of course, probably you or the designer. Now this group will work together to evaluate the fit of the garment while it's being worn by the fit model, who will sit and stand and move to give their feedback on where the garment is uncomfortable. This team will take notes and determine where the pattern needs to be corrected and sew new samples for another fit session in the future. And these fit sessions may repeat several times. So as you can imagine, this process can become time consuming and labor intensive for several reasons. Such as coordinating a team, hiring the fit models who also need to maintain a constant body measurement, and then repeated sample sewing, and so on. Most new designers don't have the budget for fit sessions or fully understand what they entail, so a better option is 3D virtual modeling software to get fit and size as perfect as possible, and then go into small batch production.
Heather Zager: [00:15:29] In 3D, the garment can be virtually sewn and modeled on an avatar, and that avatar can be the US ASTM or even Alvanon. And once modeled, the fit can then be instantly evaluated and corrected. This eliminates the need for live models and repeated fit sessions, and even fabric waste from the sampling process. In most cases, the software is not that expensive either, and includes an extensive library of virtual fabrics and includes stress and strain overlays so that the pattern maker can see any stretch where the garment might be too tight or too loose. The avatars can even be posed or animated while these overlay features are active to see how movement may affect the fit or the stress or the strain. You can also simulate colorways, logos and prints instantly, and even customize things like lighting, background and environment, and capture screenshots for incredible website photos. My favorite feature is that the software will show me where I've sewn two pieces together incorrectly, or where seams don't match in length. It just really helps me to think through the pattern and how it goes together before I ever even have to sew it. Once your garment is as close as possible in 3D, and you've used a quality standard for your brand such as Alvanon or the US ASTM, you just need to sew one sample to verify materials and sewn construction, and maybe some other technical details and get into a tech pack and then go into production.
Heather Zager: [00:17:00] At this point, your fit and sizing should be pretty perfect. So you can just do a small batch run, say 100 pieces. Once you start selling, if you do get some returns, which inevitably you will, evaluate the reasons for them and make a decision with your pattern maker to fix those things before you do another batch. Using your initial customers as a user study group is perfectly acceptable with good customer service and good communication. Keep in mind, though, that small batch isn't inexpensive, but your goal isn't to save money. It's to get on the market to gauge interest and get feedback at a pace that won't overwhelm you. If the interest isn't enough to keep going, at least you won't have hundreds of garments in your garage that you can't sell, but instead maybe dozens and a fantastic experience that gave you a good education and you can make better decisions from there on how you start your next brand or your next design. And that is everything you need to know about size and fit and what it means for your brand. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. I'm at heather@madeapparelservices.com, and I hope you enjoyed this podcast.
Heather Zager: [00:18:11] Thank you for listening to today's episode. We hope that you enjoyed it. If we didn't answer all of your questions, or you just have some comments or suggestions about future podcast episodes, please email me at heather@madeapparelservices.com.