Why Does My Top Fit at the Bust but Feel Tight Everywhere Else?
Our customers almost never say the bust. They say the arms, the tummy and the hip.
Because almost every top sold in India is graded from the bust, and the bust is rarely where our customers feel tight. When a woman tells us a top does not fit, she names the biceps, the armhole, the tummy or the hip. In four years of made-to-measure orders she has almost never named the bust.
We wrote recently about the eight in ten of our made-to-measure customers who need two different sizes in one co-ord set. Five of those eight need a bigger bottom. The other three need a bigger top, and this is their post.
The bust fits. That is the confusing part
A customer orders an L because her bust measurement says L. The bust is fine when it arrives. Everything around it is not.
What she writes to us about is the biceps and the armhole first, then the tummy and the hip. The top closes, it sits, it is technically her size, and it feels tight across her upper arm every time she reaches forward.
She is not between sizes. She is a different shape from the one the size chart was drawn around.
One size step is two inches, and it lands in the wrong place
The difference between our L and our XL is two inches around the bust. For the bust itself that is a small thing, and most of our customers do not want a close-fitting bust anyway, so two inches extra there reads as drape rather than as a loose garment.
The same step is doing something very different lower down. Across the tummy, the waist and the circumference of the hip, one size up is the gap between a top that moves with you and one that pulls when you sit.
So the customer who goes up a size is not chasing room at the bust. She is buying room at the tummy and the hip and accepting a slightly fuller bust to get it.
Why going up a size is usually the right call
We hear this from customers almost word for word: send the bigger size, I will get it tightened.
A tailor can take a garment in. He cannot reliably let it out. Tightening a seam is quick and cheap and most of our customers in India have someone they trust to do it. Opening a finished garment to make it bigger depends on whether there is seam allowance left, and often there is not. That asymmetry is the whole reason ordering up is the safer mistake.
Customers tell us this plainly before they order. They would rather take an XL and have the chest or the sleeve tapered locally than take an L and be stuck with it. We think they are right, and we would rather say so than quietly sell them the smaller size.
There is a second effect we did not expect. A woman carrying width at the tummy, waist and hip usually needs the bigger size on the bottom too. So she orders XL for both halves, tapers the top, and skips made-to-measure entirely. That is a sensible way to buy from us and it costs her nothing extra.
The ones who ask for the top to be longer
A steady number of our customers do not want the top changed in width at all. They want it longer.
They ask for it to fall to the thigh, with the hip fully covered. On a shirt or a tunic that is not a size problem and going up a size will not solve it, because length is graded far more slowly than width. A size up buys you very little hem and a lot of unwanted room.
This is the one case where we point people towards Custom rather than towards a bigger size. It is a length change, not a fit change, and it is cheaper in the end than buying a size you did not want.
It is not only us seeing this
A study of Indian plus-size ready-to-wear published in the Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management surveyed 400 women across six Indian cities and measured fit at twelve points on the body. It found poor fit at ten of those twelve points.
Ten out of twelve is not a sizing problem at the margins. It means the blocks most Indian brands cut from do not describe the women buying from them. Our own orders say the same thing in a smaller sample, and the armhole comes up again and again.
What to do before you order
● Measure your upper arm and your tummy, not just your bust. Nobody asks you to, which is exactly why tops keep arriving tight in those places. Check both against our size chart before you pick.
● If two measurements point at different sizes, take the bigger one. You can have it tightened. You cannot have it enlarged.
● If it is length you want, go to Custom instead of going up a size. A size up adds almost nothing to the hem.
● Tell us before you order, not after. Send your measurements and your height on WhatsApp and we will tell you which size to take. We do not accept returns, and exchange shipping is at your cost both ways, so five minutes now is worth more than an exchange later.
What we are doing about it
Our tops are cut anti-fit, which is why they absorb this better than our trousers do. That is a partial answer, not a real one. The real answer is separate top and bottom sizing on a co-ord set, which we are building, and a size chart that asks you for the measurements that actually decide the fit.
Until then we would rather tell you to order the bigger size and taper it than pretend our grading describes everybody. It does not. It describes a shape, and three in eight of the women who come to us for made-to-measure are not that shape at the top.
If you are new to hemp and unsure how it will sit on you, we wrote separately about whether hemp clothing is comfortable or scratchy. Our dresses are cut on the same anti-fit principle as our tops.
