I don’t see the point in doing men’s vs women’s clothing sizes. Surely there’s a big enough variance in size and shape between individuals that it would be more useful to size based off of measurements of body shape?
Take shoes for example. Why is a uk men’s size 10 so wildly different from a UK women’s size 10?
All it seems to achieve is making shopping for clothes difficult for anyone that doesn’t fit into the expected body shape for their gender and make it hard to find well fitting clothes outside of specialist shops.
I would have to speculate, but I think it’s due to averages.
The average woman is much smaller than the average man. There are a handful of sizes that will fit most women, and a handful for men. Think of a standard distribution: there will be outliers, but most are in a certain range.
Over many decades, even centuries, sizing is more rigidly codified as larger scale production of textiles/shoes becomes common, but of course this sizing doesn’t apply to everyone for various reasons, so things such as vanity sizing and regional/manufacturing differences created an even bigger mess.
Not to mention that people are fatter now because of the caloric density of modern food, so it’s relatively common now that even really short people can be very wide. Plus sizing is also a huge clusterfuck.
Another factor is fit and cut, but this comment is already too long to get into that.
I worked for a clothing store in college. I leaned that each store / clothing producer has an ideal body shape they cut the clothes for, with some variation. The higher end store you shop at, the fewer variations.
Higher end shops usually cater to a specific body shape and size. Those clothes will fit a handful of people extremely well. Big box stores will have clothes that fit everyone, but that fit will be so-so for everyone.
Yeah, it’s kind of annoying that women basically have their clothes sizes randomized and you have to look at their size chart online anyway.
At least when I go buy pants (as a man), I can reasonably assume that almost any pair I get off the rack is labelled by hip circumference and instep and roughly the size I’m expecting. Though there’s a decent amount of vanity sizing in a lot of men’s clothes these days too.