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.
Generally, women are going to have boobs and wider hips and men generally have bigger feet. Obviously there’s a massive spectrum of human body shapes, but this is the main differentiation.
If I wear my (male) partner’s t-shirts, they’re just straight with no space for boobs and they don’t come in at the waist. Same with trousers, there’s a massive pouch in the crotch, too narrow on my hips and too loose at the waist. People like to wear things that best fit their bodies.
Stuff like ski boots, too. Men and women apparently have muscle groups placed in slightly different areas, so the boots are sculpted differently to account for that.
Style/cut is different than the measurements though.
It isn’t about style. Women’s sizes (e.g. 8, 10, 12) originally came from codes based on the variations between hip, waist and bust measurements.
It’s a shortcut for measurements.
It’s easier to shop “Men’s L” or 32x32 pants than remember a lot of measurements.
I think it’s different if you want your clothes to fit a specific way, but for my shopping I want to minimize the time spent shopping and get “good enough”. That’s how we end up in minimal measurements.
I think ideally we’d have both sets: the minimal measurement and the maximalist ones for the same garment.