#Clothing measurement tape movie#
#Clothing measurement tape professional#

And, as an entirely bespoke wardrobe is out of the budget for me, it just means I have to do a little extra brain maneuvering when I shop online. I’ve always known that my sizes differ depending on the store I am in, but it turns out that I am also often different sizes throughout my whole body-my waist and chest could be one size and my hips and thighs could be another, which makes buying things like dresses and jumpsuits challenging. The measuring tape taught me other important things, such as: In a perfect world, we would all be getting all our clothes made fit to our exact dimensions. The unexpected benefits of using a measuring tape (I sure showed them!) But once I received my measuring tape in the mail, it was shockingly, stupidly easy to take all my necessary measurements.

Who knows that? Then, I would either buy nothing at all, or order several things that sometimes ended up being a terrible fit. Preposterous, I would think, before closing the pop-up window in a huff. I don’t know what I was expecting-some oracle to poke their head out of my computer screen, give me a once-over and tell me my correct size, whether I'm a summer or autumn, and if I'm a Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, or Miranda? Instead, I’d get something that looked like a multiplication table, that expected me to know the circumference of my waist, bust, and hips. In the past, when stumped on a size, I would click on the hyperlink by the size selections that promised a size guide, only to see a pop-up window of something that seemed way too much like math to actually help me out. Size labels vary depending on the store, but sizing charts tend not to lie. Crew, and I know this because of my measuring tape. But I’d always considered them reserved for special occasions that required taffeta and chiffon, not for me, alone in my bedroom, figuring out whether or not I need to go up a size when I order something from Reformation.Īs it turns out-yes! I usually do need to size up when I shop at Reformation, just as I need to size down when I shop at J. I did a lot of musical theater in my youth and I once had a prom dress professionally altered, which means that I have had measuring tapes used on me a few times.

#Clothing measurement tape movie#

In all seriousness, I was familiar with measuring tapes-I am no idiot, I have seen the movie Phantom Thread thrice-just not in an everyday sense.

#Clothing measurement tape professional#

Having your own measuring tape is (almost) like getting your clothes made by a professional designer. At the risk of sounding like one of those Silicon Valley ride-share executives who accidentally stumbles upon the concept of a public bus system: Have you guys heard of these things? They’re great. But that changed this summer, when I got myself a soft pink Singer measuring tape on Amazon for less than $3 ($2.74, to be exact). For years, I’d order something in the size I thought should fit, only to find it didn’t-and, in the case of a few unfortunate final-sale purchases, being stuck with. This is all to say that I have been burned many, many times when online shopping. There are a few problems with this, but the most inconvenient one is that clothing sizes now have less standardization across the board, so it’s impossible for shoppers to know what might fit them from any given manufacturer without trying clothes on. For example, the average waist and bust measurements of a size 8 in 1958 were smaller than those measurements of a size 00 in 2015 (a size that didn’t even exist back in the day). This is due to something called vanity sizing, a phenomenon among some clothing manufacturers in which they’ve shifted the size scales for the “vanity” of shoppers whom they believe want to see smaller numbers on the tags of clothing they buy. But sometimes I am a six, sometimes I am a two, sometimes I am an eight, sometimes I am a zero, and on some rare but not impossible to remember occasions, I have been sizes that either exceed and fall short of both of those numbers. Well, that’s not exactly true-usually, I’m a size four. A confession before I begin this: I have no idea what clothing size I am.