Garment measurements

Garment measurements describe the finished shirt itself — chest width, body length, sleeve length — recorded with the piece laid flat and empty, never stretched over a mannequin or a person. A size chart listing "20 inches chest" for a Medium is reporting that flat garment number, not the circumference of the body it's meant to fit; there's built-in ease baked in, typically 2 to 4 inches of extra room in a classic unisex cut, so the shirt measures smaller flat than the chest it's designed to go around.

This distinction is where most sizing complaints on custom orders actually originate. A customer measures their own chest at 40 inches, sees a chart listing 40 inches for a Large, orders that size, and ends up in a shirt with zero ease because they compared their body number directly against a garment number without accounting for the fit's intended room. We walk buyers through this constantly before a 200-piece run goes to print, because a reorder on a bulk order is expensive for everyone.

When fitting for a group, always pull garment measurements from an actual physical sample or the mill's official chart rather than estimating from a photo, and communicate to the group that they should compare the chart's numbers to a shirt they own, not to their own body.

The mistake, every time, is treating garment measurements and body measurements as the same kind of number. They describe two different things, measured two different ways, and confusing them is the single biggest driver of "wrong size" complaints on custom apparel.