Sizes

Articles of Interest - Avery Trufelman

This episode explores the flawed nature of clothing sizing, spotlighting Unspun's failed attempt at size-free jeans and the hidden world of fit models. It reveals how vanity sizing, inconsistent manufacturing, and subjective fit standards plague the industry.

Key takeaways

• Clothing sizes are inconsistent and often meaningless.
• Fit models are essential for accurate garment testing and design.
• Vanity sizing and fabric changes distort true measurements.

Transcript preview

I'm generally pretty tech skeptical but seven years ago I witnessed something quite amazing. Yes, so this is our space so we're building it out right now This was back when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and I went to this white walled startup e-looking tech office in a warehouse in an industrial part of town all very cliche We have an entire software team here so we work really closely with them on creating algorithms But this company was working on something I could really get behind that take into account your body That's Brooke McEver, director of Product Innovation at Unspun, which back then in 2019 was completely rethinking pants, specifically jeans. What are your pain points in finding jeans? Uh, pain points. Uh, self-loathing? I don't know. Like, buying clothes is hard. But is it like, like, the butt doesn't fit, they're too long, they're too short? Listen to that, I couldn't even narrow down what's so hard about finding jeans that. they simply never do. Yeah I feel like I often I don't have a sense of my own size and so I'll describe things that I think are cute and they just like don't feel like it's demoralizing. I still feel this way. What size am I? In some brands I am a size 12 and some brands I'm a size 2. I have even been a size 2. I have been every size in between and on jeans size 30 or 32 does not correlate to 30 or 32 inches. I have you're fit you. This was the problem that Unspun was trying to solve. So we're size free. They were making genes without sizes. And so it's kind of nice because you've been going through an entire retail experience, never having to look at a smaller or large or tell somebody what your size is or even think about it. The way the size-free technology worked was they used a giant scanner. That's the scanner right there, that room. Yes. I stripped down to my underwear. I wish I wasn't feeling so bloated today. And I stood a tiny platform, and then on the tiny platform in my underwear, I was slowly spun around. It was like being in a bad music video, just slowly rotating. And in a minute and 19 seconds, I was completely scanned. And we're taking 10,000 data points of your body, basically. So every single part of you is factored into the equation. And then Brooke informed me that my genes, my custom-made genes, would be sent to me. Ta-da. Yeah, I think there's like a sense of relief that actually comes from people when they don't have to try things on. And lo and behold, the resulting genes were, in fact, fantastic. I still have them. I wear them all the time. They're great. They fit me perfectly, and there's no size label on them. They're just my size. It was an extremely cool technology, which, like all cool things did not last. Just the other day we scanned somebody so you know it's possible it's just at scale who's ready I recently caught up with Brooke who is still at unspun which is still a very radical company they just haven't been able to focus on the size-free thing because they're busy with lots of other new technologies like right now they're focusing on these three-dimensional looms that can just weave pants right in their 3D form it saves a lot of fabric it's a new way of patterning it's a new way of patterning it's a new way of fabric it's a new way of fabric it's a new way of fabric it's a new way of and then it's custom, like those are a lot to chew on. So sizeless sizing became less of a priority here and elsewhere. So we're kind of waiting for someone to be ready and radical enough to do that. A lot of companies aren't in a place where they can do individualized bespoke body scans and they're very used to doing sizes a certain way. Mass-produced clothes still use the imperfect science of sizes. And this imperfect science, as Brooke, to me back in 2019 is reliant on one central mysterious figure. They have a fit model. So they choose whoever they think is like their person and then they design their entire collection around this person that was very hard to find. This person, the elusive fit model, is the basis of the company's sizes. And this person might have measurements that are very similar to yours. They might have very, very different measurements from yours. Sometimes it's proportions, So sometimes their forum could be too long. But they will impact how a clothing brand feels. It's one of the stranger careers in fashion. And you might be able to do it. But I don't know if you'd want to. I'll tell you why after the break. Our radiotopia colleagues, the Kitchen Sisters, have a new series rolling out over the next year called Quilts as Monuments. Their first story chronicles sew their names, and unlikely an African American preacher, a white federal court judge, and a group of rural Alabama quilters. Recently hundreds of long forgotten pre-civil war names of enslaved and segregated black members of churches across Alabama were uncovered in the Baptist archive. The So Their Names Project is bringing people together across the state to embroider, memorialize, and bring these names alive on quilts. When I went to working on the quilts, I said now these people can speak out. amongst what I'm doing. The project is going to help us remember. It's always good to have a memorial. You don't hide the past. It was something that we owned. It was something that we owned up to and we went away with our history. Maybe we'll become a monument. The Kitchen Sisters present, sew their names, quilts as monuments, wherever you get your podcasts. I was an actress working off off off off off off off Broadway and somebody came up to me at the end of the play and said my friend owns a modeling agency and I did one of those looking around me like who is she talking to? Marcy Spaniel had never thought of herself as a model. I knew it was cute but modeling like no. She was like a size 14. It was like a 14 14. 14 16. I looked like a piece of peach pie. I just didn't I didn't have a square job which was big in the 80s. I didn't have a and I was 5-7 on the nose. Most of the print models are 5-8 to 511. I was like, what is she looking at me for? And she said, she owns a plus-sized modeling agency. Why not? You know, who wants to weigh tables? Right away, Marcy was placed as a fit model. But I started fitting and I really enjoyed it because I was using my brain. And then I got to work with really great designers who were all getting involved in Plus. Being a fit model isn't about having a square jaw about being thin and it's definitely not about being tall although it is actually about being pretty which I'll tell you more about later but fit models can come in many heights many weights many ages because all kinds of clothing companies need fit models if you're a 16 w or a 20 w it doesn't matter plus size clothing companies need clothing companies need petit fit models if you're a 16 w. It doesn't matter plus size fit models petite clothing companies need petite fit models athletic fit models a brand fit model. As they get older they change size and so they just get different clients as they change size. But it is not that anyone can be a fit model. Fit models need to have the right stuff. That is where a very, very small percentage is blessed with the genetic proportions. And among that small percentage is Brit Dunlop. I fit as a small, so I'm a size for, size small small small. and disarmingly pretty, but the key thing is she's got the right measurements. There's like 52 points of measure. And they all have to be proportionate. Things like the length of your arm, the width of