History
Men's standard sizes were probably developed first during the American Revolutionary War, and they were in regular use by the American army during the War of 1812 for ready-made uniforms (Felsenthal 2012). These were based on the chest measurement, with other measurements being assumed to be either proportional (the circumference of the neck, waist, hips, and thighs) or easily altered (length of the inseam) (Felsenthal 2012).
As this was largely successful in men, the same approach was attempted in the early 20th century using the bust as the sole measurement (Felsenthal 2012). However, this proved unsuccessful, because women's bodies have far more variety in shape. The hourglass figure is frequently used as an industry standard, but only 8% of women have this body shape (Felsenthal 2012). A woman with an hourglass figure and a woman with an apple-shaped figure who have the same bust size will not have the same waist or hip sizes.
This was a significant problem for mail-order companies, and several attempts at predictable, standard sizing were made (Felsenthal 2012). In the 1940s, the statisticians Ruth O'Brien and William Shelton received a Works Progress Administration a grant to conduct the most ambitious effort to solve this problem. Their team measured almost 15,000 women across the US. After discovering the complex diversity of women's actual sizes, which produced five to seven different body shapes, they proposed a three-part sizing system. Each size would be the combination of a single number, representing an upper body measurement, plus an indicator for height (short, regular, and long) and an indication for girth (slim, regular, and stout). The various combinations of height and girth resulted in nine different sizes for each numerical upper-body measurement, which was highly impractical for manufacturing (Felsenthal 2012).
As a result, O'Brien and Shelton's work was rejected. In 1958, the National Bureau of Standards invented a new sizing system, based on the hourglass figure and using only the bust size to create an arbitrary standard of sizes ranging from 8 to 38, with an indication for height (short, regular, and tall) and lower-body girth (plus or minus). The standard was not widely popular, and was declared voluntary in 1970 and withdrawn entirely in 1983. In 1995, ASTM International, a private organization, published its own voluntary standard, which has been revised since then (Felsenthal 2012).
Read more about this topic: US Standard Clothing Size
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