So, you want pants???
Make the pants you want to wear
Not an unreasonable request. But surprisingly challenging.
Option #1: Garment in search of body
The first port of call is to purchase. Retail is awash in garments looking for bodies. Easy to find a garment with incredible style and in the fabrication you prefer. More challenging to identify such trousers at an affordable price point.
But, finding all that AND pants that fit? Mission Impossible.
I think we can all agree that well-fitting pants should not require a lifelong quest.
Option #2: Body in search of garment
Take two. We have a body in search of a garment. Match the clothing industry directly with the individual consumer. Instead of making clothing for “average” specifications, let us “make to individual measurements”.
Make the garment yourself or go to a professional who will make it for you. The starting point is the individual body. Measure the body in multiple locations to draft a custom pattern that is in turn used to make the garment. The body measurements might also be used to make a basic fitting shell that is a basis to derive other styles. If you want to learn how to do this yourself, there are many industry professionals willing to pass on what they learned in fashion school.
The downside is that the average person has neither the time to acquire the knowledge necessary to make great design as well as adapt that design for an individual body and create, nor the resources to commission a custom made garment. Learning how to rotate a dart is straightforward. But the reality is that behind every successful garment is a huge amount of prototyping and understanding of fabric behavior to refine the design.
Option #3: Body in search of garment but take a shortcut
Enter a third option. The third option sidesteps any need to acquire professional knowhow in garment design and fabrication by purchasing a pattern, aka the blueprint used to make the design. Yes, the pattern comes in “average” sizing. But the design has been fully realized. The architect’s work is done. The maker’s job is to adapt the architecture onto the landscape of the individual body and create the garment. This option is like getting the meal prep kit. Yes, you still have to cook the food and load the dishwasher. Slow fashion is a whole order of magnitude slower than slow food. But that’s fine, we need to eat every day, but don’t need new clothes at the same rate. Plus, thanks to the paper pattern industry, we can access designer patterns. It’s like sourcing the recipe from the Michelin-starred restaurant.
Still Need to Fit
Readers who have been making garments for a while might be saying there is significant overlap between options two and three. Both situations require custom fitting.
Traditional Fitting Approaches
Existing fitting approaches are adapted from the fashion industry where they are used in the process of drafting and garment prototyping. For example, suppose the drafter has created a pattern but a test garment shows there is insufficient allowance for the customer’s bust projection. The relevant pattern piece is then adjusted to address the issue. The pattern alteration then becomes codified as “the way to address a large bust projection”. Extending this concept logically leads to the concept that the adjustment should be reversed if the bust projection is small. Such adjustments become catalogued for reference so that anyone encountering a similar issue can look up the appropriate adjustment.
Identifying what adjustments need to be made is the dominant approach to garment fitting.
However, it was also clear that there was a particular item of clothing, pants, where it was particularly easy to get trapped in a fitting cycle.
The issue was not that traditional fitting approaches did not work, clearly many people have terrific success. The problem was that these approaches were not sufficiently robust and reliable. When they worked, the adjustments were not readily transferable to other patterns, and when people were not finding success, there was no explanation as to why other to blame some allegedly problematic body part and continue the hunt for the “magic” adjustment that would fix everything. Check out this blog post and comments for a typical example of pants fitting frustration. There are many such angsty examples, the struggle is real.
From the Perspective of the Maker
What I realized was that people like myself, who were creating with themselves as clients, were not as interested in making a pattern as much as making a wearable garment. In the fashion industry, the process of fitting is combined with the process of pattern and design creation, but our starting point, a commercial pattern, is different.
I asked if fitting could be approached differently, not just an ersatz version of the process in the fashion industry but completely reimagined from the point of view of the individual maker. The Top Down, Center Out approach is the result.
TDCO can be used to fit a basic quality commercial pattern by somebody who has no garment making experience at all. The outcome does not sacrifice any aspect of a well-fitting garment. It can be used by all bodies, all sizes, all genders.
