Size and Fit

MADE Apparel Services Podcast

Host Heather Zager talks about size and fit in this third of her four-part series called Concept to Customer. She explains exactly what fit and size are, technically speaking, and what they should mean to a garment and the customer wearing said garment. Historical context and a modern-day leaning towards vanity sizing are also addressed in Heather’s deep dive into how to best size and fit the garment being made for the ideal customer to wear.

Fit is how the garment fits onto the wearer and how that fit suits the activity the garment is designed for. Generally speaking fit aims for comfort but specific items fulfill different purposes wherein that might not be the top goal. A swimsuit and a ski jacket will be designed to fit very differently, for example. Size is then sizing that garment larger and smaller to accommodate different bodies while making sure the fit is the same on every shape.

Heather explains all the nuances of sizing, covering vanity sizing, historical custom-fit clothes, how sizing affects fit, and standardized sizing. She discusses why the average standardized sizes don’t necessarily fit every body and how those sizes were initially calculated. How should a designer tackle the questions of size and fit for a garment? Heather sheds light on the answer with guidance and context based on her extensive knowledge and experience in the industry.

About Heather Zager | MADE Apparel Services Founder and Owner

Heather Zager found her calling when she signed up for a beginning pattern-making course and realized she had a passion for technical design. She subsequently enrolled in the Apparel Design and Development program at Seattle Central College and graduated two years later with her Associate of Applied Science Degree.

After graduation, she began working with Meta assisting in developing and designing augmented and virtual reality wearable tech gear. In 2020, MADE Apparel Services was born with the idea of helping makers, inventors and designers bring their own sewn product ideas to manufacture. Since then, she has worked with various businesses such as Santa’s Tailor, Feathered Friends, Wolfpack Gear and Classic Accessories, helping them achieve their goals in design, development, pattern making, sewn construction and manufacture

Today, Heather continues to grow her knowledge and share her experiences with others to bring their visions to reality.

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Resources mentioned in this episode:

• ASTM history
• Alvanon
• History of the Toga

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Contact Heather Zager | MADE Apparel Services:

• Website: MADEApparelServices.com
• Facebook: MADEApparelServices
• Instagram: MADEApparelServices
• Linkedin: MADEApparelServices
  
  

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Transcript

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 cor...