Can a Co-ord Set Have Different Top and Bottom Sizes?

Eight in ten of our made-to-measure customers need exactly that. Here is what we found out.

Not on most Indian clothing websites, including ours as of today. One size selector covers the whole set, so the top and the bottom have to match each other. For a lot of women they should not match, and here is what we have learned from the customers who have asked us for different top and bottom sizes.

Eight out of ten of our made-to-measure customers need two different sizes. Not two sizes because they are between sizes. Two sizes because their top half and their bottom half are genuinely different sizes.

We did not know that when we started. We sold by size, the way everyone does. Customers kept writing in asking whether we could change things, and the pattern in those messages is what told us there was a gap. We opened made-to-measure because of those messages, not because we planned it.

It is almost always a smaller top and a bigger bottom

Of the customers who need two sizes, the great majority need the top smaller and the pants bigger. A woman who fits our L on top will often need an XL on the bottom.

And the reason is not what most size guides assume. It is not the bust. The two measurements that push people into a bigger bottom size are the thigh and the crotch. After that, the tummy and the hip.

One size step is not a large change on paper. In the thigh and through the seat it is the difference between a pant you forget you are wearing and one you think about all day.

Why you notice this on pants and never on tops

This is the part that took us a while to see, and it has nothing to do with bodies.

Our tops are cut anti-fit. Our pants are tapered. In our experience an anti-fit top has enough room in it to absorb a sizing mistake. If you order one size too big, it reads as the way the garment is meant to sit. A tapered pant has nowhere to hide the same mistake. The exact same error, on two garments from the same set, produces a non-event on top and a problem below the waist.

So when a customer tells us a set did not fit, it is nearly always the pants. The top was probably wrong too. She just never had reason to notice.

The order that taught us this

The most recent customer who told us a set had not worked had not looked at our size chart at all. She ordered by what she takes from another brand, which is what most people do.

Her top was fine. Her dresses were fine. Both are anti-fit, so the size she picked disappeared into the drape. The pants were tapered and they were wrong, and that is the only item she wrote to us about.

Nothing about her body caused that. The construction of the garment decided which half of her order failed.

What a tailor can fix, and what he cannot

Most of our customers in India have a tailor they trust, and they use him. We would rather be straight about where that works and where it does not.

He can take things in. He cannot let them out. Tightening a seam is quick and cheap. Opening a finished garment to make it bigger depends entirely on whether there is seam allowance left, and often there is not. That is why so many customers tell us outright: send the larger size, I will get it tightened. It is a sensible decision and we do not argue with it.

What he cannot touch is our hem. The embroidery on our pants sits on the hem itself. Shortening or lengthening those pants means cutting through hand-finished resham thread, and it does not survive it. This is the one alteration no local tailor can do for you on a THOH pant, and it is the reason we would rather cut the length for you in the first place.

Our standard pant length is 38 inches. We cut 40 for a customer around 5 foot 11, and 37 for someone around 5 foot 1. If your height is anywhere outside the middle, that number matters more than your size does.

What to do today, before we offer two sizes in one checkout

We are working on letting you choose a top size and a pant size separately on a co-ord set. It is not live yet, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Making it is not the hard part. Getting it to work properly everywhere we sell is.

Until it is, here is what actually works:

●      Order the top in your true size and the pants a size up if your thigh or seat is where clothes usually pinch. Buy them from shirts and pants as separates rather than as a set, and you have already solved it.

●      Measure yourself once, properly, and write it down. Bust, waist, hip, thigh. It takes four minutes and it will outlast every brand's size chart you ever read. Most people pick a size from what they bought last, which is how the order above went wrong.

●      Message us before you order, not after. Use the size assistant on our site, or tell us your measurements and your height on WhatsApp, and we will tell you which two sizes to pick. We would rather spend five minutes on WhatsApp than process an exchange, because we do not accept returns and exchange shipping is at your cost both ways.

●      If you need the length changed, order Custom. Because of the embroidered hem this genuinely cannot be done afterwards, by us or by anyone else.

The honest version

Size inclusivity is a phrase every brand in India now uses, ourselves included, and it mostly means a longer dropdown. A longer dropdown does not help a woman who is two different sizes. Eight in ten of the people who come to us for made-to-measure are exactly that, and a single size selector has never served them.

We stock XXS to 4XL, and 5XL to 7XL plus made-to-measure are made to order. None of that is the interesting part. The interesting part is the thigh and the crotch, which no size chart in India asks you to measure.

If you have ever bought a set and worn only half of it, you already knew that. We are just saying it out loud.

Questions about sizing go to our team on WhatsApp before you order. If you are unsure whether hemp will suit you at all, we wrote about whether hemp clothing is comfortable or scratchy separately.