Why are shirts short again?

There was a golden era - roughly 2010 to 2015 - when women with long torsos could walk into an upscale clothing store and find some tops that fit. Maybe we had to try on 10 tops to find 2 that were long enough, but we were able to fill our wardrobes with nice tops. (I imagine this was vis versa for shorter women - so we were all able to find tops.)

2026 fashion makes me very nostalgic for that time. For the last several years, I’ve returned everything I bought online because it’s square and short. What happened? The usual things like private equity consolidation, fast fashion, race-to-the-bottom cheapness, etc. (See video below for a rabbit hole.) Every shift aimed at faster product development and cost-cutting has led to a monoculture in fashion. And women with long torsos have been cut from consideration. We’re left to make our own tops or hold on to aging tops we’d really like to replace. 

The bottom line is nuance is expensive. It’s cheaper to produce 100,000 units of a "standard" boxy shape than it is to account for the variety of human anatomy. It’s cheaper to use a forgiving polyester fabric than to create new patterns with more sustainable fabric. It’s faster to design a top once with a 3D avatar and send it to production without fit testing and iterations.

 

Long Torso Women Need Tunic Length

Through learning to sew and adjusting my own patterns, it’s been really clear why tops don’t fit long torsos. The big companies add a couple inches to a regular top and call it a Tall, but the without changing the bust or waist locations/measurements the garments don't flatter a longer torso. For a garment to truly fit a long torso, there must be considerations at the straps, bra line, ribs, and waist. Our torso length is spread out, so we need different tops not just long tops. And now that everything is stupid short, nothing fits us.

This concept of making everything worse on purpose is beautifully explained here:

So what do we do? 

If you want a garment that respects the reality of your anatomy, you won't find it from a brand owned by a private equity firm. Brands focused on stock price will continue to market their ill-fitting clothes while ignoring the reality of women with long torsos. The straps will stay short, the waists will be at our ribs, and everything will look cropped. 

The future of good fit will belong to smaller, independent brands. These are the designers who look at bodies not spreadsheets. Small brands are the only ones left with the freedom to ignore the “standard” and design for the individual.

If you want to shop small, here are some other small brands doing cool things: Youer, Thunderpants, Slightly Buddha, Brook There.