DU 404: The Evolution of the Craft: From Bespoke to Ready-to-Wear — and What Comes Next
Summary
Before the mid-nineteenth century, virtually all clothing was made for an individual. Understanding how we got from there to today's mass production world is the best way to understand why a different approach is worth pursuing. Ready-to-wear is not the problem — what it became is. Custom size is the best of both worlds: individual fit at workshop efficiency, for $100 more than RTW. Bespoke is your measurements and your design, built from scratch. All three are made in the same Brooklyn workshop, by hand, to the same standard.
Q&A
Where did the standardized sizing system in clothing come from?
From the Civil War. The Union Army needed to clothe hundreds of thousands of conscripts quickly. The solution was to measure a large sample of men, identify the most common proportions, and produce uniforms in a range of standardized sizes. After the war, factories that had produced uniforms pivoted to men's suits, carrying the sizing system with them. By the end of the 1860s, standard sizing was generally adopted for ready-to-wear production. The template that underlies every size chart in every clothing store in the world was set by military necessity — not by any considered theory of how clothes should fit.
What is the fundamental limitation of ready-to-wear clothing?
RTW is built for a statistical center — the most common proportions across a size range. If your body sits close to that center, it works well. If it doesn't — if your thighs are fuller, your rise longer, or your waist and hip proportioned differently than the fit model — RTW will always be a compromise. That's not a failure of the product; it's a structural limitation of the category. It's also exactly why FITTED Underground built something else.
What is custom size and how does it differ from altered ready-to-wear?
Custom size jeans are cut from scratch to your exact measurements — not altered from a standard size. The design (fabric, pockets, hardware, details) is FITTED Underground's; the fit is yours. Rather than sizing by a label number, the pattern is cut to your actual waist, hip, inseam, and rise measurements. It runs $100 more than ready-to-wear, made possible by the efficiency of small-batch production. It is not altered RTW — it is cut individually from the beginning.
What is the difference between standard bespoke and fully bespoke at FITTED Underground?
Standard bespoke adjusts existing FITTED Underground patterns to your measurements — the right approach for most bodies, and the foundation for a pair that fits precisely and reflects your design preferences completely. Fully bespoke goes further: the pattern is built from scratch in hard paper from your measurements alone. This is for bodies or fit requirements that fall outside what existing patterns can accommodate, and for people who want to be involved in every decision from the first line on the paper to the final press. Bespoke starts at $795.
Why is custom size described as "the precision of the past, made accessible"?
For most of human history — before the mid-nineteenth century — every garment was made for a specific person from their measurements. Ready-to-wear replaced that with statistical averages. Custom size returns to individual measurement as the starting point, but makes it viable at a price more people can access by using the efficiency gains of small-batch production. Individual fit, workshop efficiency. It is not a novelty or a luxury add-on. It's a return to something that was always the right way to make clothes.
Test Your Knowledge
Click each answer to reveal whether it's correct.
1. What event established the standardized clothing size system still used today?
A. The Industrial Revolution — factories needed uniform sizing to run production lines efficiently
❌ Incorrect. While the Industrial Revolution created the infrastructure for mass production, the standardized sizing system came specifically from military necessity during the Civil War — not from factory production logic.
B. The Civil War — the Union Army measured large samples of men and produced uniforms in standardized sizes, a system factories then adopted for civilian clothing
✓ Correct. The Union Army needed to clothe hundreds of thousands of conscripts quickly. The solution was to measure a large sample of men, identify common proportions, and produce uniforms in standardized sizes. After the war, factories that had produced uniforms pivoted to men's suits and carried the system with them. By the end of the 1860s, standard sizing was generally adopted for ready-to-wear — and the template that still underlies every size chart in every clothing store was set.
C. The invention of the sewing machine — mechanized production required standardized inputs
❌ Incorrect. The sewing machine made production faster but didn't establish sizing standards. The standardized size system came from Civil War military procurement.
D. Department stores — Macy's and others created standardized sizes to simplify inventory management
❌ Incorrect. Department stores adopted and accelerated ready-to-wear clothing sales, but the sizing system predated them. It came from Civil War military procurement in the 1860s.
2. What makes custom size different from altered ready-to-wear?
A. Custom size uses higher quality fabric than ready-to-wear
❌ Incorrect. Custom size and ready-to-wear at FITTED Underground use the same Japanese selvedge denim from Collect Mills. The distinction is in the fit process, not the material.
B. Custom size jeans are cut from scratch to your exact measurements — not altered from a standard size — using the same design and construction as ready-to-wear
✓ Correct. Custom size jeans are cut individually from the beginning to your actual measurements — waist, hip, inseam, rise. They are not a standard pair with alterations added after. The design is FITTED Underground's; the fit is entirely yours. It runs $100 more than ready-to-wear, made viable by small-batch production efficiency.
C. Custom size includes a fitting appointment; ready-to-wear does not
❌ Incorrect. FITTED Underground offers fitting appointments for all product tiers, including ready-to-wear with free in-store alterations. The distinction between custom size and RTW is in how the garment is made, not in the service experience.
D. Custom size allows you to choose your own fabric; ready-to-wear does not
❌ Incorrect. Fabric choice is a feature of bespoke, not custom size. Custom size uses FITTED Underground's designs and fabrics, cut to your measurements. Design customization belongs to the bespoke tier.
3. How does FITTED Underground make custom size viable at only $100 more than ready-to-wear?
A. Custom size uses lower-cost fabric than ready-to-wear to offset the additional labor
❌ Incorrect. All tiers use the same Japanese selvedge denim. The $100 premium is made viable by production efficiency, not material cost reduction.
B. Pairs are cut individually but sewn in small coordinated batches — personalized at the cutting stage, efficient at the sewing stage
✓ Correct. Custom size pairs are cut individually to each measurement set — personalized from the beginning — but sewn in small batches when orders align. More labor than ready-to-wear, less than fully individual bespoke. That balance is what makes the $100 premium reasonable rather than prohibitive. Individual fit, workshop efficiency.
C. Custom size customers wait longer, which reduces the workshop's labor cost per unit
❌ Incorrect. The $100 premium is made viable by batching at the sewing stage, not by making customers wait. Turnaround for custom size is four to six weeks — similar to bespoke.
D. The $100 premium covers only fabric — cutting and sewing are done at the same cost as ready-to-wear
❌ Incorrect. The same fabric is used across tiers. The $100 reflects additional labor — individual cutting to custom measurements — made viable by batching the sewing with other orders.
4. According to the article, who should choose bespoke over custom size?
A. Anyone who wants their jeans faster than the standard custom size turnaround
❌ Incorrect. Bespoke has the same four to six week turnaround as custom size. Speed is not the reason to choose bespoke.
B. Those who want to design the jean as much as wear it — choosing fabric, thread color, pocket style, and hardware — or whose body requires a pattern built from scratch
✓ Correct. Bespoke takes everything custom size offers and extends it into the design itself — fabric, thread color, pocket style, hardware, every element. It also exists for bodies or fit requirements that fall outside what existing patterns can accommodate. If custom size is fit made personal, bespoke is the whole garment made personal.
C. Anyone purchasing their first pair of raw denim jeans
❌ Incorrect. For first-time buyers, ready-to-wear (with free in-store alterations) or custom size are the recommended starting points. Bespoke is for those who want to design the garment as much as wear it — or whose bodies require a fully custom pattern.
D. Those who want the best quality fabric available
❌ Incorrect. All three tiers use the same Japanese selvedge denim. The distinction between tiers is about fit personalization and design involvement, not material quality.
← Previous: DU 403 | ↑ Denim University | Next: DU 405 →
By Eric Steffen
Founder / Maker
FITTED Underground
It Wasn't Always Like This
Walk into any clothing store today and the experience is so familiar it's nearly invisible: racks of garments organized by size, each one identical to the last, made somewhere far away for a body that isn't quite yours. You find the closest approximation, take it home, and make do. This is how clothing works. It's how it has always worked.
Except it hasn't.
For most of human history, every garment was made for a specific person. The normal way we buy clothes today is, historically speaking, a roughly 150-year experiment in trading fit and longevity for affordability and speed.
For most of human history — for the vast majority of the time that people have worn clothes — every garment was made for a specific person. Not a size range. Not a fit model. A person. A government report from 1811 found that two-thirds of all garments worn by Americans were made at home. The rest were made by tailors and seamstresses who measured their clients, cut patterns to those measurements, and produced something that fit the body in front of them. Ready-to-wear clothing, in any meaningful sense, did not exist.
This is worth sitting with — because what we think of as the normal way to buy clothes is, historically speaking, an anomaly. A roughly 150-year experiment in trading fit and longevity for affordability and speed. In many ways that trade was worth making. In some ways it went too far. And understanding that arc is the best way to understand what we're trying to do at FITTED Underground — and why custom size, in particular, is not a novelty or a luxury add-on. It's a return to something that was always the right way to make clothes, now made accessible in a way it never was before.
How We Got Here: The Rise of Ready-to-Wear
The shift from made-to-measure to mass production didn't happen overnight. It happened in stages, each one building on the last.
The first mass-produced outer garments in America weren't made for consumers — they were made for soldiers. During the Civil War, the Union Army needed to clothe hundreds of thousands of conscripts quickly. The solution was to measure a large sample of men, identify the most common proportions, and produce uniforms in a range of standardized sizes. It worked. After the war, the factories that had produced uniforms pivoted to producing men's suits. The sizing system followed. By the end of the 1860s, standard sizing was generally adopted for ready-to-wear production — and the template that still underlies every size chart in every clothing store in the world was set.
What followed was a century of infrastructure being built around that template. The sewing machine made production faster. Department stores created the retail environment for mass consumption. After World War II, economic growth, a rising middle class, and the expansion of department stores and catalogues made affordable versions of fashionable clothing available to almost everyone. For much of this period, the bargain was genuinely good: clothes were affordable, reasonably well-made, and built with enough seam allowance that a home seamstress could alter them to fit.
The second trade-off — quality for price — came later, and it went further. As production moved offshore in search of cheaper labor, garment quality declined steadily. Fast fashion accelerated the process, training consumers to expect lower prices and accept shorter lifespans. US garment industry employment peaked at 1.4 million in 1950 and has been falling ever since. The craft knowledge that once lived in American workshops went with it. What remained was a system optimized for volume and margin, not for the person wearing the clothes.
That's the world most clothing exists in today. And it's the world we're working against.
Ready-to-Wear: Reintroducing Quality
Ready-to-wear is not the problem. The problem is what ready-to-wear became.
In its best form, RTW is a genuine achievement: skilled makers producing well-designed garments efficiently, making quality accessible to people who couldn't otherwise afford bespoke. The original bargain — affordability and speed in exchange for a fit that's close but not perfect — is a reasonable one. The version that evolved over the second half of the twentieth century, trading construction quality and material integrity for ever-lower prices, is a different thing entirely.
Our RTW jeans are made in the Brooklyn workshop, by hand, the same way we've made every pair since 2014. The same Japanese selvedge denim from Collect Mills in Kojima. The same construction — flat-felled seams, French pocket seams, chain stitch waistband, Brooklyn Sunrise button. Made to wear in, not wear out. The fit follows our Dean and Wythe patterns, refined over hundreds of pairs and years of iteration. For many bodies, they fit well from day one. For bodies that need adjustment, we offer free in-store alterations.
What RTW cannot do, by definition, is account for the full range of human variation. It's built for a statistical center. If your body sits close to that center, RTW works beautifully. If it doesn't — if your thighs are fuller, your rise longer, your waist and hip proportioned differently than the fit model — RTW will always be a compromise. That's not a failure of the product. It's a structural limitation of the category.
Which is exactly why we built something else.
Custom Size: The Best of Both Worlds
When I started FITTED Underground in 2014, I was making bespoke jeans. Every pair was built from the ground up for a specific person — their measurements, their preferences, their body. It was the right way to make jeans. It was also slow, labor-intensive, and expensive. Accessible to some people. Not to most.
At the same time, I understood what ready-to-wear had figured out: that efficiency isn't the enemy of quality. That producing garments in a systematic, organized way makes it possible to offer something well-made at a price more people can afford. The problem with mass RTW wasn't the efficiency. It was what got sacrificed in pursuit of it: the fit, the materials, the craft.
Custom size is our attempt to keep the efficiency and give back the fit.
Here's how it works: rather than sizing a pair of jeans by a label — a 32, a 34, a number that means something different at every brand — we size it by measurements. Your actual waist. Your actual hip. Your actual inseam and rise. Those measurements go into the pattern, and we cut a pair of jeans that reflects your body, not a statistical average of someone else's. The design — the fabric, the pockets, the hardware, the details — is ours. The fit is yours.
This is not a new idea. It's how clothes were made for centuries. What's new is the context: we can offer it at a $100 premium over our RTW price because the efficiency gains of small-batch production make it viable in a way that traditional bespoke never was. Individual fit. Workshop efficiency. The precision of the past, made accessible by what we've learned since.
Custom size is not altered RTW. These are cut from scratch, for you, from the beginning. Individual fit. Workshop efficiency. The precision of the past, made accessible.
Custom size typically takes four to six weeks. And it's worth saying clearly: these are not altered RTW jeans. They are cut from scratch, for you, from the beginning.
Bespoke: Your Measurements, Your Design
Some people buy watches as heirlooms. Some collect art. Some spend years finding the right bag. For a certain kind of person, the object they care most about carrying through their life is a great pair of jeans — and for that person, bespoke exists.
Bespoke takes everything custom size offers and extends it into the design itself. Not just your measurements, but your choices: the fabric, the thread color, the pocket style, the hardware, the stitching details, every element that makes a pair of jeans an expression of something personal. If custom size is fit made personal, bespoke is the whole garment made personal.
We offer two levels of bespoke. Standard bespoke adjusts our existing patterns to your measurements — the right approach for most bodies, and the foundation for a pair of jeans that fits precisely and reflects your design preferences completely. Fully bespoke goes further: we build the pattern from scratch, in hard paper, from your measurements alone. This is for bodies or fit requirements that fall outside what existing patterns can accommodate — and for people who want to be involved in every decision from the first line on the paper to the final press.
Bespoke starts at $795. Turnaround is four to six weeks, with an expedited option available. The process involves a consultation — in person at 108 Bayard Street, or remotely — where we work through the design decisions together. It is, in the most literal sense, the way clothes were made before the world decided efficiency mattered more than fit.
How Each One Is Made
All three product types are made in the same Brooklyn workshop. The differences in how they're produced are part of why they're priced differently — and understanding those differences clarifies the value of each.
RTW jeans are cut and sewn in batches. We produce a run of a given style and size, cutting multiple pairs at once and moving them through the construction sequence together. It's the most efficient use of workshop time, which is what allows us to offer RTW at the base price.
Custom size pairs are cut individually — each pair to its own measurement set — but sewn in small batches when orders align. It's personalized at the cutting stage and efficient at the sewing stage. More labor than RTW, less than fully individual bespoke. That balance is what makes the $100 premium reasonable rather than prohibitive.
Bespoke pairs — particularly fully bespoke — are produced one at a time from start to finish. The pattern work, the cutting, and the sewing are all done as a single continuous commission. It's the most time-intensive production process we run, which is reflected in the price and the turnaround time. It's also the closest thing to what a tailor offered in 1850: one maker, one client, one pair of jeans.
Which One Is Right for You?
The honest answer depends on what you're looking for.
If you want a well-made pair of jeans as soon as possible, and your body fits close to our standard patterns, RTW is the right choice. Come in for a fitting, try them on, and we'll alter them in-store at no charge to get the fit dialed in.
If you've never found jeans that fit the way you want them to — if the waist fits but the thigh doesn't, or the rise is always wrong, or you've simply stopped trusting that off-the-rack will work for your body — custom size is what we built for you. It takes a few weeks. It's worth it.
If you want to design the jean as much as wear it — if the fabric choice matters to you, if you have opinions about thread color and pocket shape and hardware, if you want something that is yours in every sense of the word — bespoke is the answer.
The Throughline
Three product tiers. One workshop. One approach to making.
Whatever you order from us is cut and sewn by hand at 108 Bayard Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, using the same Japanese selvedge denim, the same construction techniques, and the same standards we've held since 2014. The price changes. The tier changes. The commitment to making something that lasts — something worth wearing in, worth repairing, worth keeping — doesn't.
That's what we're trying to return to. Not nostalgia. Not a history lesson. Just the belief that a garment made for a specific person, built to last, is better than the alternative — and that belief is as old as clothing itself.
What Comes Next
DU 404 covers what kind of jeans you want made. DU 405 goes inside the machines that make them — every piece of specialized equipment in the workshop, what it does, and why it exists. That's DU 405: Jean Machines.
← Previous: DU 403 — How to Make a Pair of Jeans | Next: DU 405 — Jean Machines →
Core Curriculum
Complete the core curriculum by reading these essential classes.
- DU 101 — What is Raw Denim?
- DU 102 — What is Selvedge Denim?
- DU 104 — Denim Weight Explained
- DU 201 — How to Buy Your First Pair of Raw Denim Jeans
- DU 204 — How Much to Spend on Raw Denim
- How It Works — FITTED Underground
Eric Steffen is the founder of FITTED Underground, a custom jeans and raw denim workshop at 108 Bayard Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He has been making jeans by hand since 2014. Denim University is his attempt to share everything he's learned — about the history, the craft, and the culture behind the world's most enduring garment.
