I used to be a loyal buyer of a specific Eddie Bauer T-Shirt over at least a decade, until I bought four of them online a few years ago from their website. Despite my ordering all the same size and style, each shirt is a different length (varying by as much as two inches) and fabric weight. Haven't bought one since and won't do so again.
There is truth to this and it has certainly been true of women’s sizing for many years where everyone wants to be a size 2 (or whatever your number is) but no size 2 is the same across brands.
It’s an entirely different problem when I buy two pairs of presumably the same pair of jeans in the same style and size yet one can barely be buttoned up and the other requires a belt at all times.
And then there is the adventure of asymmetric cuts. Quality control has been outsourced to the customer. The return rates have increased a lot, some of it going straight into the bin.
Do you think maybe clothing is size now inferred from an item's weight? Cut close enough and then bin by weight...?
Finding knit caps for my pumpkin sized head is challenging. I'd find a good fit but then couldn't reorder the same item.
I stumbled onto the notion of selecting by weight instead of the declared size. Success!
More recently, there was a HN thread about buying good jeans. I then noticed the better quality mfgs also include the fabric's weight in the item's blurb. Which I then used to inform my foraging.
On the other hand, I bought a pair of hiking boots back in 2011 that are still going strong. So much so that I got another pair of boots by the same company a couple of years ago - same exact model, same size etc - solely as a spare in case they stop making them. Fits like a glove.
The trick? The company in question is Belleville, and they make boots for the US military; they just also happen to be good hiking boots. I suspect that people in charge of logistics as DoD don't like it when things suddenly change, which would explain why they still have the same model still going for 25+ years, and why the sizes and everything else stays the same.
