Clothing sizing that uses numbers pisses me off so much that I’m enraged just by the mere mention of it in this post. If the jeans say 25 inch waist it better fucking measure 63,5cm at the waist, but it never does. My vintage Levi 501’s in w28 are the same size as my newer Levi’s in w25! Make it make sense!
I believe it’s called ”vanity sizing” and it’s designed to make people (who are emotionally tied to their clothing size) feel better about being a smaller number, no matter what that means in actual measurements in this dimension we exist in.
For me, as a male, it's not about vanity but about fit. As someone who is short (161cm ~ 5.5') clothing size becomes a hassle. I can't buy pants with a perfect leg because they always make them longer. So I then have to get them resized to fit or I roll them up. Resizing makes that pair of pants more expensive. Rolling makes those pants inefficient as inevitably they will unroll.
Shirts are the same. If I get a "Chinese" large, it's more of a "Medium" on me. This means the arms don't fit nicely and are more often than not too tight. If I was a body builder I would be fine with that but... well... have you seen the pictures of me? 🤣 But a US "Large" is the equivalent of an "XXL" on me and I float in them.
This is why I prefer a standard measurement of CMs. But even this seems to not be correct. Going back to the tape. My previous tape measure read 77cm at the waist before it broke. I couldn't work out why if it was reading that, why was my 87cm pants not sliding off me. My new tape has me back at 87cm which explains it nicely.
This leads me back to my question. Why the hell aren't tape measures a standard? A cheap tape measure using a standard measurement should read the same as the most expensive tape measure.
I have to disagree with you about the pant legs, if there are no options for different lengths, it’s much better to have them too long. I’m 167cm and even I have a problem of finding long enough jeans, the L30 is always on stock and 32 and 34 are always sold out or not available. It’s so much easier to hem than to add more 😅 We have jean stores here that hem the pants for free for you.
I completely glossed over the tape measure thing so I had to pull out some to check if mine are accurate. It doesn’t look like it in the picture but they are all very very close to each other, the clothing tape measure is the odd one out but that is actually pretty normal, they can stretch over time, especially cheap ones because they are soft plastic.
I’m not having a go at pant lengths being too long. I get my wife to hem them but if you don’t have that ability then here you have to pay to get them hemmed. It might be different if say I bought a suit as generally they will do it as part of the fitting.
But if I buy a pair of $20 jeans at The Warehouse it’ll cost me about $20 to get them hemmed otherwise because The Warehouse doesn’t have a fitting service. It’s not worth it.
I never thought about the stretching thing. Both tapes I have/had are fibreglass so not supposed to stretch but they will break, hence my problem.
It is interesting to me though that the tape I just bought is more inline with reality though. I’m now measuring at 87cm which is what my pants are. The one that broke was telling me I was 77cm which is better for my ego I guess but not inline with reality.
I just thought it was interesting that there could be such a discrepancy with something that should be a standard measurement.