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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3083 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 24, 2026

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What's your hit rate when shopping for clothing (casual wear)?

Trying to figure out if I'm uniquely bad at this, or if it's normal and I just need to be buying more stuff to increase successes, or instead skill-up and reduce the failure rate. I think once I've walked out of a store with clothing, there's maybe a 50% chance per item that it actually works out for me.

I must be so bad at it, because I am not even sure what does it mean for a clothing item to "work" for me. I mean, if it does not cause me physical discomfort when I wear it, and does not look ridiculous, it works? That said, my wife pre-approves almost all clothing items I buy anyway, so maybe "working for me" is part of the criteria, I have no idea. Also, I very rarely find myself in a situation where it matters what I am clothed in, provided it is clean, conventionally looking and approximately matching the season.

Pretty good - I’ve worked in clothing for a few years tho and have a fiancé. Prior to this I was a mess.

Have a Dillard’s near you?

Walk up to someone and ask for help.

AE too - probably a few other nationwide places I can’t think of right now where people may truly be able and want to help out.

80-90%. The misses are usually because I get so fed up of not finding what I'm looking for that I end up compromising and regretting it.

80-90%.

If I order online it's typically stuff I've already tried out before.

Rather high, maybe 90%. I don't buy stuff that doesn't work for me, unless I make a mistake. Like, I had a white medium-sized polo and bought a navy medium-sized polo. Same company, same model, different color. Too small, should've tried it on. I also bought a super-slim dress shirt at the end of my cut. And some skinny chinos. These are probably my only big duds. I wear the rest, but there are specific items that are in constant rotation and outshine everything else.

100%, except for cases where it stops fitting (either because I get fatter or it shrinks in the wash). If I buy an article of clothing, it's because I like it enough to wear it.

75%. Slowly moved up over time from a bottom of like 20% when mom stopped buying clothes for me.

It took me a long time to figure out I like cotton, some polyester, and hate most other fabrics. It took me longer to figure out I dislike clothes with the brand name displayed. And so on. A decades long trial and error process, and I still make mistakes because I shop mostly online now and it's hard to judge fit from a picture. 90% if I happen to buy in person, I rarely miss then.

I will say that I no longer care how I look and that comfort, fit, and price are all I care about in that exact order. Most of my clothes is from Target, Old Navy, and Gap.

Basically 100%. I wear everything I keep, though I usually order a variety of sizes and colors and return half or more of my order right away.

How do you end up disliking half of what you buy?

  • bad guess about how the item will fit after washing or wear. This is especially a problem with shoes. Some people seem comfortable with a full +1 size of slack, but I want mine to be snug within 1/4 size of perfect, which usually entails buying them just slightly too small so that they are the right size after a few weeks of use, but it doesn't always work.
  • insufficient courage / better judgement - I thought I was that person. I'm not that person, so the item goes unworn.
  • some unforseen issue that I couldn't have reasonably predicted when trying the thing on. (unfixably scratchy tag, weird stitching that turns out to be a problem in everyday use, etc.)
  • and similar

I can understand his point. Some people just have horrible fashion sense and their ideas about what they think will look good just don’t match when they suit up. I get most of my clothing from Buckle. It’s become my default, one stop shop for everything and the style is right up my alley.

Sure, but once you try it on you can make the decision to not buy/return it. The question is how do you try something on, like it, then start disliking it.

If you change your mind too much as time goes on, that’s different from simply disliking half of what you buy.

At first I thought you were asking how many of the clothes you try on work out for you and you buy them, which my answer was going to be like 10 percent, but then I re-read your question and realized you're asking what ends up working for you after you take it home.

In that case it's probably around 75% for me. I try to be extremely picky in what I purchase because I hate wasting money on stuff that doesn't work out. The biggest culprits of things not working is stuff shrinking after the first wash and the irritation of having a slightly inferior product compared to what I already own and I can't stand to trade down when I have something better on hand. Also I have a habit of thinking something looks good in the mirror without realizing it's uncomfortable as hell which I can't unnotice the first time I try to actually wear it

For reference I have a degree in fashion design and shop all the time and this is still a terrible problem.

If I find something I like from a brand that makes the same things all the time (like MUJI, Uniqlo or LA Apparel) I will happily buy multiples of the same style in different or same colors which helps a ton but is incredibly irritating when they change things or discontinue items and you have to start all over

ha. yes, I genuinely regret not buying a lifetime supply of some items before they discontinued them. Would have felt extremely autistic to do at the time, but I miss them and nothing has replaced them.

Yeah don't worry about how autistic it is, there is so much crap in the world that when you find the perfect thing just get tons of it. I have 3 pairs of my favorite pants which were a random seasonal piece from Express, I'm going to be annoyed if I can't find a 4th pair since I've already worn through the first two

I’d been looking for a particular pair of men’s, blue Stacy Adams for years before finally coming across a brand new pair that was just my size once on eBay. I instantly bought it despite it being on the pricier side of things, specifically for the reasons mentioned. Directly on their website they’d long since been out of production.

There used to be a company called Trunk Club (that I think was bought out by another entity), that sought to solve this problem for you. What you would do is image yourself, and an associate with I guess(?) a qualified fashion sense would go out and shop for clothing and brands on your behalf, you’d pay for the clothing plus the markup for the shopper, and your clothes would be shipped directly to your front door. You’ll could still return them if you didn’t like them. I never used them at all but I found it very interesting when I first heard about it.

Yup there have been a handful of services with this model over the years, they never seem to catch on. Actually fashion startups with sort of gimmicky business strategies (rent the runway type things for example) almost never work out, I suspect investors are not usually the type of people to understand the fashion industry, and fashion companies are notoriously poorly managed in general

By fashion management are you talking about the retail side or brand management? I’d imagine luxury and even mid-tier brand managers understand the trends and forces quite well. On the outlet side of things, I can see how they’d be suffering.

Ehhhh it's kind of a mess all the way around. There are a handful of companies like Levi's which are grandfathered in and have a very specific niche that they do well enough that they are hard to mess up and I would describe as well run, though even those have rough patches.

Luxury brands are currently going through a huge problem where they've inflated prices outside of the reach of aspirational shoppers (basically everyone but the very rich) with zero increase in the quality of the goods they are selling- this is the case right now with every brand in the category from Chanel to the LVMH labels to McQueen. I believe I just read in the Business of Fashion that the luxury market (as in the number of buyers consuming luxury goods) has shrunk like 40 percent in the past 5 years. Of course before this LVMH for example was doing great for over a decade so things are cyclical and to some extent outside the control of management but the mishandling of the price point and quality control has been ridiculous and unnecessary and avoidable IMO.

Fashion management is also very prone to misunderstanding the customer's needs or desires, doing a poor job of matching expectation with product selection, they tend to fall for flavor of the day gimmicks that often fail, there is often friction between the business and creative sides of the businesses, and so on

That's insane, is this online shopping from unknown brands or emergency shopping right before an event?

My hit rate is 100%, because I'm picky and I only shop in person and I try everything on. I often leave without buying anything, because I know what fits and what looks work for my body type and aesthetic.

Either you need to simply walk away more often, or this is a skill issue. The latter can be condensed into a hand full of straight forward rules. "The cuff needs to be this long", "the shoulder seam needs to sit right on this bone", "lifting both arms must look just so", "squatting in new jeans must feel like that and show this much ankle". The exact values for all that can be gotten from YouTube or guides on manosphere blogs and /r/malefashionadvice. All 3 are dangerous, because half those people dress like retards, so look at the pictures and decide if you want to look like that.

I've added a couple of additional rules that save me lots of time by not even trying things on ("absolutely no synthetics, 1% is unacceptable", "the maximum size of a logo is 1/2", "no baggy/skinny cuts", "only plain, neutral colors"), but that's basically it.

99%? If I try it on and like it, it's gonna be good. I usually thrift these days, but I don't think there's any secret, just be picky before you purchase, not after. I usually try on like 2% of what I see, and buy 20% of what I try on.

My hit rate is about 75%, which is embarrassingly low when you consider that I'm buying nice designer/vintage stuff. Usually because I see something I love and convince myself the measurements will work, and they don't. For less fashion-inclined people, I recommend finding brands you like and building a uniform out of them, so that when you buy the next piece you know how it'll look and fit - personally, my no-thinking uniform is RM Williams boots, Darn Tough socks, bn3th underwear, Outlier trousers, Wolf vs Goat tshirt, Spier & Mackay turtleneck (don't actually love those but don't have a great brand for turtlenecks yet), Arcteryx jacket. For less fashion-y friends I recommend Uniqlo/Muji/Spier & Mackay/APC. Solid, muted colours, no graphics. If you want a statement piece, go to grailed or ebay and search for Stephan Schneider, there isn't a single designer who's better bang for your buck and the cuts are very forgiving (don't be like me! Read the measurements!).

I almost entirely buy clothing online, with probably an 80% success rate, but I am quite picky and think about it for several weeks ahead of time.

Lately my preferred method of getting clothing is from Uniqlo collaborations, where they preview their items a month before the sales date, and if I still want something a month later, I generally really do want it and will wear it. Occasionally I have to send something back, which is annoying to do, more than other companies. Also their collaborations, specifically, are a bit better quality than other clothing at that price point.

I do not wear jeans at all, and still wear skirts with leggings in situations where jeans would be appropriate, because they never fit correctly.

My husband buys items in person but does not try them on, and wears literally everything he purchases for several years. This seems to be some combination of not being picky, and having the body type that most clothing is designed for.

<...> having the body type that most clothing is designed for.

I realized a few years ago I had achieved a body that was perfectly compatible with at least several brands I liked. Not too short, not too tall, not too fat, not too athletic. This meant I could buy practically anything they had for sale off the rack. Sadly, one of them must've diversified its suppliers and this is no longer true for their knitwear.

Cultural question but what kind of knitwear does a Russian man wear? Jumpers?

Ordinary cotton T-shirts are also knitwear.

Any kind? I like turtlenecks, but you can wear crew necks, V-necks, quarter zips, full zips...

I think I'm probably at 70%. Yeah it's just a problem and it pays to develop a keen instinct to return anything you're not sure about as soon as possible. If it looks good you'll know. If you're not sure you'll end up regretting keeping it probably nine times out of ten.

Works out how, exactly? Are you talking overall comfortable fit, or just pure looks?

some combination. basically: will I ever wear this thing, or will I hate it for one reason or other (fit, looks, quality) and decide buying it was a mistake?

Huh. That would be a problem, yes.

Granted, I have a near pathological fear of purchasing clothing brand new, so I always tend to buy things either used or clearance. Probably cuts down on buyers regret a good deal.

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