I'm the founder of threadbase. Thanks everyone for your kind words. I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions for what you'd like to see next or how we can improve the user experience. We're also looking for front-end/design help, as well as help with computer vision tech. Feel free to email me chris@threadbase.com.
I understand the desire for adults to have a shirt that fits, but I think that falls squarely in the bucket of "nice to have". As a parent of a child that doesn't fit any of the sizing charts, being able to predict what size of what brand will fit my kid would be a "must have"! Kids also tend to go through clothes a lot faster than adults, making the potential savings of getting a good fit far greater.
Is it as important that kids clothing fits precisely though? I mean, evidently it is to you but I would I would have thought parents would be happy that the kids look decent enough. You even point out their rapid growth so it's not like they're going to be continuously wearing the perfect fit all the time. Buy slightly big and they grow in to it.
It's not so much "precisely" as "not ridiculously wrong". The difference between "slightly big" and "tent" isn't much, considering there is practically no objective basis to kids' sizings, which are basically the intended age with no consideration of variations in age & growth; the sizes do not reflect an actual size.
Yes, this! Just to get close to fitting, we have to get our son pants for a 6yo, shirts for a 4yo, and socks for a 3yo, and even then we end up rolling the sleeves on his shirts because he needs the length in the chest but not as much the arms. I can't tell you how many pants, shirts, socks, etc. we went through before figuring out this is the combination that works. Oh, yeah, and this is only with the specific combination of pant/shirt/sock brands that he's currently wearing. If we had to replace one part with a different brand (which we will, because he's growing and for some reason there's no brand that reliably stocks the full toddler-kid-youth size range), we'd be screwed.
Most important (for us, anyway) is t-shirt quality and softness. Like you said, we buy big and they grow into it and out of it but it's the quality that really matters. We buy mostly Hanna Andersson shirts for our boys. They're expensive but they still look good after two seasons of wear, which is remarkable for kids' clothing. Our younger boy wears many of the HA shirts and coats that his big brother once wore.
This applies more to shoes than clothes. It's ok to have a little bit of variance in clothing, but given how much kids run around, they need shoes/sandals that fit really well.
I organize an annual conference [1]. All of our attendees get a free tshirt. We purchase all of our tees from a single manufacturer (say American Apparel) and let the attendee tell us the size they want before we finalize the order.
The problem is that attendees often don't know what size will fit them, and sometimes guess wrong and end up with a poor fit. Anything you could offer us to help here?
They should build a system like the "True Fit" size finder on Moosejaw.com. You tell them about your body size and then give them some brand/size combos that you already have and like. The finder can then tell you which size to buy for XYZ brand.
Excellent work and presentation! I'd love to see a similar treatment on jeans. For instance, I wear Levi's, and always default to 501 32/32, and the 5 pairs I have range from baggy to painted-on. I'd be interested to see the manufacturing variance within/between countries of origin–I have pairs from 3 different countries, and like I said, very different fits.
It would interesting to see the effects of washing on denim jeans since there was a huge uproar when some famous designers came out and said the NEVER wash their denim jeans since it ruins the material:
This is great for comparing cotton or cotton blend shirts. I'd love to see the same data for shirts that don't use any cotton. We make fabrics for our own brand and usually stay away from cotton partly due to the problem of fit variance after wash.
Threadbase is a really cool project. I'd definitely use something like this if it were available in my country. Good luck, I hope you succeed and go global.
