This post talks about the obvious secret to looking good in clothes. At least it may seem obvious to those who know it, but to many people this may be a revelation. It’s not you. It’s the industry.
Source – How to alter your own clothes!
(via: Geek Girls)
Does this “nothing is made to fit you” thing apply to men too? I’ve been having a TON of trouble with my work clothes.
It absolutely does. And far from being designed to make you or anyone else feel bad, the psychological effects thereof are an unintended by-product of industrialization. The ethos of the industrializing period was “every cog in its place; a well-oiled machine”. And that meant standardized everything, from portion sizes in food to clothes sizes in garments.
It was assumed that this would free up time for the workers to be more productive, as they could just get something “in their size” straight off the rack, and wouldn’t have to get it made from scratch. Alterations could be done at home by the housewife as needed, and that would be that.
But the industrial era mechanized and regimented everything, including workers’ time and home life, to such a degree that women often no longer had the time to do those alterations at home. So it became habit to simply accept garments by their size straight off the rack and wear them as-is. Because there wasn’t really an alternative available, short of the poor housewife being run into the ground with yet another significant task to get done on a regular basis.
And before anyone jumps on my comments here about the housewife doing the alterations being sexist: yes they are, and I acknowledge that. They are in fact exactly as sexist as the times were, when this was the expected duty of the housewife; along with doing all of the cooking, cleaning and other basic household brute labour, with the men expected to all be handymen and the disciplinarians of the household. Thank goodness those days are over.
This size-perception issue has been worsened since the integration of the Orient into the economic communities of the West, and for a couple of reasons. The first is that Asiatic clothing workers are paid effectively slave labour wages, and this has seen mass market clothing manufacture become largely an Asiatic industry. Which wouldn’t be such an issue if not for point two: the Asiatic peoples are so much smaller than Europeans, Polynesians or Africans, that this has resulted in what would once have been considered a Medium size (a perfectly average European mid-range) on manufactured clothing now being graded as Extra Large. And this in turn causes perfectly average-sized European men and women to see themselves as exceedingly fat when nothing could be further from the truth.
All of this goes undiscussed throughout the entirety of our school educations, however, leaving us all to question our inability to fit our clothes well and come to the conclusion that the problem is with us rather than the manufacturing and industrial mindset. Those who reach sufficient financial heights to have their clothes tailored come to learn the truth; and once they do, tailored clothes become the norm. But by then, they too have had decades of exposure to the idea that the problem is with them first; and that has its negative psychological consequences.
The wisest way to react to all of this is to realise that the labels indicate an Asian person’s perspective of your approximate size only, and that your clothes are always going to fit only approximately until and unless you either get them tailored to fit, or until you make your own specifically to fit you. If you feel you need the perfect fit, tailor the clothes to you and not yourself to the clothes. It’s cheaper, and it’s healthier.
If only the clothes really WERE consistent cogs in a machine. At least one would know what they’re getting each time.
Yes, it applies to men as well, tho (in my case, I dress very simply, working a somewhat blue-collarish job) I think fewer guys care as much as the majority of women about how we look. If I’m wrong or you disagree, that’s fine, you probably have more fashion experience than I will ever have.
Why don’t we sit young girls down and let them in on this secret? The conspiracy theorist in me says doing so would seriously hamper the consumerismth and inventory turnover of the global fashion industry. This is part of the whole trend of industries to nickel & dime consumers, convince them that corporations know their needs better than they do, etc etc. etc.
And I’m not given to spouting may conspiracy theories… basically none,.. but if you look carefully at the patterns inherent in corporate actions, you can see those patterns yourself.
I want to point out that, some decades ago, it was typical for women to make their own alterations to their purchased clothes. Alterations are much simpler to do than people think.
Yes, men as well.
I knew about this problem in women’s clothing – size numbers being meaningless between brands and sometimes inconsistent in the same brand – because my wife kept running into it. Finally I encountered it myself: I had two very comfortable pair of pants from a well-known brand size 38. Bought another pair and they didn’t fit at all; went back to the store and found that size 40 fit but not as comfortably as still-wearable 38s. My wife teased me about gaining weight; but the old pants still had the smaller size tag and still fit (until they went threadbare in sensitive areas 🙂 ). The numbers are not consistent from brand to brand, product line to line, and even year to year.