Getting the right fit on your swimwear products is really really tough. Especially if you're new to the fashion industry and don't really know what the right approach is.
Let's explore what you can do to improve the fit of your swimwear products. Here’s a transcript of one of my weekly videos in which I answer one of your questions on starting your very own fashion brand. You can click here to watch the free video.
Swimwear Fitting Process
This week I want to address a question that I've had from a few people which is about the fitting process for swimwear products in particular because I know that that one's a little bit tricky and a little bit different from a dress design.
What is a Body Size Chart?
What do we need to do when we're working with swimwear products? The first thing to know especially if you're a new brand trying to develop your own sizing for your brand is that I wouldn't refer to body size charts.
A body size chart is something that you would see on somebody else's website, like a store's website, which helps you to decide what size to buy and that's going to tell you measurements if you measure around your bust or your waist or your hips and that's really good from a customer perspective in order to try and buy the right size from that particular brand. But it's not going to be particularly helpful for you with deciding on the measurements of your swimwear products
The reason for this is that swimwear is actually negative body size. So if for instance, your bust measures 86cm the swimwear is not going to measure 86cm. It should be quite a lot smaller than that. The amount will depend on the stretch of your fabric and also, different brands interpret fit differently.
Some brands want things to be really tight-fitting and on the skimpier side whereas others are more generous with their sizing. So it's partly to do with the fabric partly to do with personal preferences as well.
Have You Done Market Research?
If you're a new brand wanting a starting point, then the best place to look is going out in the market, doing market research, trying on different designs, ideally ones that are similar to the ones that you want to make, and taking a mental note of the fits that you like and that shape that you like and having a look at the measurements of those items as well.
Go that step further and looking at what brands similar to yours are doing with their measurements. You can also compare that to that body measurements chart if you'd like. I know a lot of people like to do that comparison. It's not something that I would do personally, but you may want to, just so you can start to understand what that variance between the body size and the measurements of the garments are.
Why Do You Need Tech Pack?
I would always suggest in terms of perfecting that fit, that you have detailed measurements in the tech pack and when I say detailed, I mean literally, anything that requires measurement of some kind to be added in there because I see a lot of tech packs which have just the basic measurement. So maybe like the bust, waist, hips, and length on a swimsuit.
But actually, we need a lot more than that. For instance, we want to be looking at the armhole drop. We want to be looking at any measurements for seam details or for ruffle details the neck drop and so many more measurements, so make sure that you don't skimp on measurements in your tech pack when you're creating that and also make sure that you preparing for the sampling process as well.
You don't want to be rushing, you want to allow enough time to have samples made so that you can perfect the fit on a real model, because as much as you can put a lot of time and effort into your tech packs, and I definitely recommend that you do, you still will need to have a fit process.
If you have a really great tech pack and your item isn't too complicated, then you hopefully going to be able to get two to three samples and they're ready to go to bulk production. But if you skimped on the tech pack or you're not communicating properly with the factory, you'll probably find that it's going to be more like 5, 6, 7 even 8 or 9 samples until you're actually getting a good fit on your model.
Don't skip on that initial research phase or the tech phase and make sure that you go through the sampling process.
Is Your Brand Swimwear Fitting Ready?
If you don't know what any of those things mean that I've just said, feel free to put a comment in the box below because we have got videos and free training on those topics, which we can link to for you if you're unsure.
I hope that's helped, at least having a starting point for where you can look for some measurements and how you can approach your sizing. If you do want some more help on perfecting the fit then I do have a service that helps people go from the initial idea to factory ready. So I'd love to chat with you, just click here for more on how I can help!
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