I wonder if understanding a particular brand's sizing drives up repeat purchases.

altairprime 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes. This is specifically a driver for having brand-specific sizing: knowing what size I am in Wooland Jade does nothing whatsoever to help me assess a potentially cheaper option in Uniqlo Whatever. It's the same lock-in effect as cloud APIs, only implemented through attributes instead. Imagine the chaos in the guitar market if the "bass" in "bass guitar" had up to +/-25% variation between guitar manufacturers — it would be a total nightmare trying to cross-shop guitars away from your current one, and lots of people would just end up glued to a brand so they don't have to do the hard work of assessing 'is this within +/-5% of the bass that fits me now'.

▲

harrall 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes but it’s multiple dimensions other than just waistline. e.g Some brands make boxier shirts and others use longer cuts.

Because “my style” prefers one over the other, I know when I buy from a certain brand so it’s going to fit on me better.

If if waistlines were standardized it wouldn’t really account for all the other measurements.

	▲	Gigachad 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's also different definitions of waistline size. Pant sizes "lie" because historically most pants sat further up your waist, now that many of them sit on your hips, they give you a measurement as if they were still sitting higher up so you can compare between the fits with the same number. Really the only bulletproof solution here is to just go try them on in store and see which fits best.