RTW Fitting Issues

RTW Industry's Fitting Issues

While the information here is intended for Independent Designers, fitting issues are very relevant for the RTW industry. There is an article written in Italian on SizeBay's website translated as "Why Clothing Sizes Are Inconsistent Across Brands." SizeBay's business is consulting with major garment manufacturers to solve the complexity of selling clothes by eliminating size uncertainty. Here are some of the points this article makes that are relevant to the work of Independent Designers.

• "Bodies are not standardized. Every human body is unique. Therefore, standard measurements and sizes will never be able to capture the nuances and unique fit and style preferences of each individual shopper."
• "Clothing itself is not standard: some items are designed to be oversized, others are designed to be more form fitting."
• "Brands use different fit patterns based on the consumers they are targeting. Consider a brand that caters to bodybuilders versus a brand that caters to petit or plus sized women. Instead of tailoring their clothes to fit some sort of universal standard, brands make sizing choices that are targeted to their specific target audience."
• "Brands don't want standard sizes. The fit, design, and measurements of a brand's clothing are a form of intellectual properity. Internal size charts are closely guarded secrets."

Lindsey's Fitting Issues

I was surprised when Lindsey asked for help with her RTW patterns. She had already been running a sucessful business for over a dozen years so I asked her what issues she had with the patterns she had been using. This is what she said.

• "I have very specific needs for my patterns such as the style, fit and sizing (for both my RTW and Bespoke pieces). My previous patterns simply did not offer me the ability to create pieces to fit those needs. In my situation, using a computer program to create patterns caused numerous problems with my finished garments. Instead of following natural contours of the body it made awkward angles causing a poor fit.
• For my new RTW patterns I needed certain sizes. Being able to base the new set of patterns on already established sizes and scaling them up or down allowed that. This method is much faster than drafting new patterns, especially based on measurements without a dress form or live model."

She had been making her patterns for shirts using a pattern design program which shall remain nameless. I had a similar experience when I was approached by a company making pattern design software that wanted to use my approach to pattern making. When they sent me sample files I found it was impossible to use their software to adjust the patterns for fit or design so I declined to work with them.

The key to making RTW following the approach described here is that the Studio software does not create patterns, it provides the necessary CAD functions to draw and edit straight and curved lines giving complete control over the shape of patterns and a scaling function for changing them to different sizes.