Ramblings about the fitting process
I have delayed starting this newsletter for a long time, unsure how to actually begin. Luckily, I was inspired by a recent opinion piece in the New York Times that has been making the rounds in the sewing community this week: Your Clothes Were Never Meant to Fit You by Elizabeth Endicott.
I’ve been thinking quite a lot about fitting recently — it’s the primary reason why I began the process of creating my dress block. One of the most important lesson I’ve learned through this process, as well as from years of making my own bras, is how very nuanced and unique fitting is to each individual. It’s not as simple as a collection of measurements, because two individuals with the exact same measurements could have those measurements distributed very differently on their bodies.
I see this often in bra sewing. I wear a UK size 32GG, and yet I cannot wear a good portion of ready-to-wear bras in this size. This is because the size itself, 32GG, refers only to the underbust circumference and full bust circumference of a bra. But there’s a lot more to getting a correct fit — underwire size and breast tissue distribution (which impacts cup volume) are huge factors.
I ran into similar concerns when creating my dress block. I made twelve different versions of the bodice block in order to get a fit I was happy with, and even so, it doesn’t fit me perfectly (though I think the pursuit of perfect fit is impractical, given how often our bodies fluctuate in size). What struck me most was how even the subtlest changes to seam lines and dart points had a sizable effect on fit.
All of this is to say that, yes, it makes sense that mass-produced ready-to-wear clothing isn’t, and frankly can’t be, designed to fit the majority of people. But sewing patterns, even with their expanded size ranges, also have limitations. They’re still built off of a pre-determined base shape. For many, myself included, adjustments are still necessary.
I often see pattern reviews posted on Instagram that include a line along the lines of “this pattern fit me perfectly, with no adjustments!” as though this is a marker of a well-made pattern. In fact, all this means is that the reviewer’s body happens to be very similar to the block that the pattern was based on (or, perhaps, they are not as bothered by small fitting issues as I am). What disturbs me about this sentiment is it promotes the same wrong idea that the ready-to-wear industry has been pushing on us for decades: that we should be striving to fit into a mold.
But the beauty of learning to sew our own clothes is that we don’t have to fit into a mold. We don’t have to wear what everyone else is wearing, and we can make any adjustments we please — be they for aesthetic reasons, fitting reasons, comfort reasons, you name it. We don’t even have to use a pattern. This is why I’m so interested in learning to draft clothing for myself — so that I can really discover my own sense of style, free of what the rest of the world tells me I should wear.
Thanks for joining me on this journey. In the future, I’m planning to share more details on my making process, and not so much stream-of-consciousness posts like this one. These thoughts have been swimming around in my mind recently, and it helps to write them out here. What about you, reader? I’d love to know if any of this resonates, or if you have other thoughts on what you’ve learned while sewing and fitting your own garments. Leave a comment and let me know!