Specifically, it is the makers of pants I am currently miffed at. I bought two pair of pants over the weekend, a pair of jeans, and a nice pair of cargo-style pants that are nice and light and will do well in the hot weather we’ve been having. Both are the same size – 34 waist (because I have been growing the last few years), and 30 inseam (because unfortunately the growth has not been of the vertical sort.) The cargo pants fit well: Comfortably snug around the waist, though perhaps a tad longer in leg than I’d prefer. The jeans, though? There’s about an inch clearance around the waist, and two extra inches on the legs. And these were Levis.
The hell? Are these companies interpreting the readings of their tape measures differently? Is Levi Strauss & Co. assuming people want pants with “room to grow?” Is that European inches versus US inches or something? Is there a Secret Code of Pants where every manufacturer agrees to disagree on the exact measurements of each other’s garments? Or are the manufacturer’s of the tape measures to blame? Perhaps they’re colluding with the pantmakers for mutual fun and profit, one paying the manufacurer of said measuring tapes to supply the other with tapes of differing measurements.
I mean I’ve experienced the slight differences in pants from one manufacrurer to the next before, but it’s never been quite this egregious before. Thus, I must declare these otherwise perfectly good trousers (the garments) to be pants (the UK derogatory idiom).
I can top that…of course, I’m female, so I have an unfair advantage because women clothes are intentionally designed to drive women insane.
I bought a pair of light-colored jeans. They fit fairly well, if I wore them with a belt, and since I have such trouble finding clothes that fit, I decided to order two more pairs. I ordered two more of the exact same jeans, in different colors. When they arrived, I found that the dark blue pair fit perfectly, no belt required. However, the black pair was so tight I had to return them and order the next size up. In the same freaking item! When the next black pair came, they fit fairly well. If I wore them with a belt. :smack:
Also, these jeans were supposedly size zero. Odd, since all the other jeans I own range from 3 to 5. It’s bullshit, I tells ya.
[QUOTE=silenus]
Levis are usually “shrink to fit.” Wash them a few times…they’ll change. Even the so-called “pre-shrunk” ones.[/QUOUT]
The Levi Strauss company does have a strange tape measure. My experience is the marked size is usually one to two inches smaller than your actual measurement. They’re trying to flatter you into thinking you’re two inches smaller than you really are.
But were pants’ waist sizes ever given in true measurements? 20 years ago I could wear 29" Levi’s, and now I wear 31" inch jeans (though now I prefer Lucky Brand). I realize that body image is the very nexus of self deception and denial, but even at my most discouraged moments of waist-pinching, I am sure that 2" is the actual increase in my waist over the years, and not 5 or 6. And yet, when I run a tape measure through the belt loops, I come up with 34 or 35".
You should be measuring the inside edge of the pants. The thickness of the pants will cause the circumference of the outside of the pants to be larger than the circumference of the inside of the pants. Admittedly, I doubt the difference is 3-4 inches.
Ah-ha. I’m not the only one. I avoid shopping for pants at all costs. I finally broke down and went for it a couple weeks ago. I tried on probably 25 pairs, literally.
Now I’m tall so that makes it more difficult to begin with. Anyway, I was triyng on all different brands marked as the same size. But were they the same? Hell no! They were all too short, or they were long enough but too tight one place or another. Grrrr! I finally stopped looking at the marked sizes and was picking them out by what looked like it might fit, maybe. I finally found one pair that fits, look at the size… OMG! size 17 So, I know I’m no size 17. I go pick up a size 10 in another brand, and guess what. Yeah they look exactly the same size waist but the 17’s were like 5" longer. I don’t get it. I need to learn to sew so I can just make own frikkin’ clothes.
I have three pairs of capri pants, purchased from the same store. They were on the same rack. One striped, one khacki and one black. The stripes fit. The khacki hang on me like they’re two sizes too big and the black ones are so tight you can see panty lines.
Why did I buy them? Because I tried on the striped ones and made the hideous assumption they’d all fit, because they were the same size and brand. :rolleyes:
Glad I’m not the only one – though I’ve heard some horror stories about women’s clothing. Still, it’s irritating, especially when shopping in an establishment that does not have fitting rooms (not that I have the ambition to use them) to pick up something you sort of expect to be your size only to discover it’s either too small to fit over one of your limbs, never mind both, or it was meant to be worn by people intending to smuggle refugees in their waistband. The tags should read “It’s definitely a 34, but we’re not sure if we’re reading inches or feet.”
I purchased 4 pairs of shorts this summer. None of them fit “right” and none of them fit now that they’ve been washed the way they did when I tried them on in the store. I hate the fact that at 5’4" ladies’ shorts come in either “two inches below the crotch” length or “knee length.” The “knee length” ones tend to have slim thighs ( I, however, have plump thighs, and abundant curves).
But the thing which drives me the absolute battiest is this: It seems to me like all these shorts, plus several skirts I tried on and/or bought are designed to fit women whose waist measurements are the same as their hip measurements. That doesn’t describe me. I have an hourglass figure, it’s a little bottom heavy, but mostly hourglass. Judging by the way that the waistbands on many of my clothes fit, I ought to be able to wear a size or two smaller. However, if I do that, I can’t put anything in my pockets–and that’s assuming that I can pull the doggone article of clothing up over my hips. Drives me bonkers–especially since I’ve been losing weight, and could wear nicer fitting clothes, except that they don’t seem to exist.
Oh god yes. Black jeans are always tighter/smaller than blue jeans. I have noticed this too. I never buy light-colored jeans, so I couldn’t tell ya there. But I believe you,.
The most aggravating thing about buying men’s pants is that it is often very difficult to buy odd waist or inseam sizes. For example, since I lost weight, 38 waist pants are usually too big; 36s are often too small. 37s? No can get. It wasn’t always this way, either; years ago, I remember it being much easier to get odd sizes (then, the jumps to even-only sizes occurred only with large waist sizes, say, 42 or above). Inseams vary…sometimes 30s are too short, but not always (WTF?). 31s would be nice, but no can get once again. Grrrrrrr…
Modern clothing generally has two inches of ease added to the actual body measurements. Ease allows your body to move inside the clothing and allows you to put it on or take it off. It also prevents the clothing from pinching. Say you have a thirty-inch waist when measured with a tape measure. On the jeans, the waist measurement would actually be thirty-two inches.
What I don’t know is if mens’ jeans are sold by actual body measurement or pattern measurement.
I hear that. I’m of the moderately diminuitive persuasion, topping out at 5’5" and require about a 28 inseam. Given the variation in pants measurements however that could be 26 or might be 30. Currently however my ideal waist size is 33" which, of course, only exists in some parallel universe. Thus I have to settle for a 34 which, if done right, still fits fairly well – like these cargo pants, which do have a touch of give to them but still stay where they’re told. Unfortunately, “right” appears to be a subjective term in the garment industry.
I am a 5’8" female. I weigh 120lbs. I have a 34" inseam. I have a pair of 14’s that fit and a pair of 4’s that are falling off me. I haven’t yet figured out a brand that actually fits me. I wear Levi’s mostly out of necessity because they have different lengths. Standard women’s lengths are 28", tall are 30" Please note where on my thighs these lengths fall. My savior has been capris because then I only have to worry about the waist size and not so much the length.
So, in theory, I am anywhere between a size 2 and 14, give or take a size or two.
It’s at the end of the OP. They’re not “trousers” (the long-legged outer garment) but “panties” (the female equivalent of boxers-or-shorts); i.e., they’re unfit for wearing in public.
So, I know I’m no size 17. I go pick up a size 10 in another brand, and guess what. Yeah they look exactly the same size waist but the 17’s were like 5" longer. I don’t get it. I need to learn to sew so I can just make own frikkin’ clothes.