Grading Is Mandatory. Turning Your Jeans Into a Completely Different Pair of Jeans Is Optional.
I’m going to be really honest with you here, grading is not my favourite part of the job.
The numbers, the deep technical thought, the Excel formulas (my arch nemesis). It’s like trigonometry. Ok, it’s nothing like trigonometry, I just remember whatever that was, it was vile.
When it comes to developing jeans, grading is the bridge between the pair you’ve spent months perfecting and an entire size range that actually fits.
Getting your sample size right is only part of the job.
You can have the most beautiful size 10 jean in the world, but if the grading is wrong, your size 18, 20 or 24 can end up looking like a completely different pair of jeans and that's when things start getting expensive.
There’s no single right way to grade.
There’s definitely wrong (so wrong), but there are also lots of different rights.
It depends on your jean, your customer, your size range, your block and the fit you're trying to achieve.
When jean grading goes wrong, things get weird.
The waist starts gaping.
You get ginormous pockets
There’s suddenly loads of fabric in strange places.
Bum cracks start showing.
The whole aesthetic can look totally different.
And often, you won’t realise any of this until it’s too late because who is actually checking the fit of every size?
Next thing you know, the returns are coming in and there’s a suspicious pattern developing at one end of your size range.
What is really frustrating for me is that lots of brands only discover what a Garment Technologist is once they’ve had a problem like this.
Then they come begging for help because their bulk is messed up.
Of course I get my firefighting hat on and jump into action, but it’s so annoying when it would have been much cheaper to set it up correctly in the first place.
So, what is grading?
Grading is how we take your base pattern and turn it into your full size range.
Every point on that pattern has a grade rule.
Those points move on an X/Y axis so the jean grows and shrinks in a controlled way. And the important word there is controlled. This isn’t cooking. You cannot just add a bit to the side.
You also can't take the same amount, chuck it onto every measurement and hope for the best because bodies don't conveniently get bigger and smaller at exactly the same rate everywhere which is really annoying.
Let’s say you've fitted and approved your jeans on a UK size 10.
As you move up the size range, the waist needs to increase. So does the hip. So does the thigh. Your rises need to change. Your knee and hem might need to change, but those things don't necessarily need to increase at the same rate, and that's where blindly applying standard increments can start causing problems.
The relationship between the waist and hip can change as you move through a size range, body proportions change, where people carry volume changes. Meanwhile, you're also trying to preserve the thing you actually designed in the first place.
Where the waist sits, the shape of the legs, where the pockets fall, whether it is oversized or fittied.
Good grading isn't just about making every size fit. It's about making every size have the same intended fit.
Your factory's standard grade isn't necessarily your grade.
Factories make a lot of clothes, good factories have a huge amount of technical knowledge and experience, but there's an assumption I see quite a lot that because a factory works with lots of brands, their standard grading must therefore be right for yours.
Maybe it is, but maybe it isn't.
Their standard grade hasn't necessarily been developed around your customer, your block, your size range or the silhouette you're trying to achieve.
If you're only checking one fit size and then asking the factory to grade everything else from there, you're putting quite a lot of faith into numbers you've potentially never actually looked at. I would very much like you to look at the numbers.
Your sample size fits, great. What about everyone else?
This is particularly important if you have a broad size range.
If your core fit sample is a UK 10 or 12 and your range goes up to a UK 24, that's a long way to travel using one set of assumptions about how the body changes.
At some point, you may need to consider introducing a second fit process.
That might mean fitting and sealing your core size, grading to a larger size within the range, then physically fitting that size and reviewing what's happened.
And I can almost guarantee you'll find something you want to adjust.
Maybe the waist-to-hip relationship needs changing.
Maybe you need more room through the thigh.
Maybe the general proportions aren't working anymore.
Maybe the pocket that looked perfectly positioned on your original sample suddenly looks tiny and is floating somewhere around the upper bum.
You review it, correct it, seal that fit and use it to inform the remaining sizes.
Does this mean more work?
Yes.
Potentially another pattern, another sample and another fit session, but if you genuinely want your jeans to fit well across a broad size range, sometimes that's what it takes.
Simply taking a pattern fitted on one body and making it progressively bigger doesn't automatically make it suitable for every body in your size range.
This is where your returns data gets interesting.
If you're already selling your jeans, don't just look at your overall fit return rate.
Look at which sizes are coming back.
If your size 10 and 12 customers are delighted but your 18, 20 and 22 are repeatedly returning for fit, that tells us something.
Likewise, if one end of your size range consistently complains about the waist while another complains about the thigh, I want to know about it.
You might not have a problem with the original fit at all.
You might have a grading or tolerance problem.
And changing the base-size pattern to solve a problem that only exists further up the size range can create an entirely new problem, which is how you end up chasing your tail through multiple rounds of sampling.
Very fun. Very relaxing. Excellent use of everybody's time and money.
What I actually do
I spend a lot of time on grading because, despite everything I've said about Excel, I want to know your customer and I want to get it right.
I look at your existing block and grade rules.
I look at your target customer and size range.
If you're already selling, I want to know what's being returned and why.
I benchmark your competitors and stalk their size guides online.
I take suspicious piles of jeans into changing rooms and try to look totally normal while secretly measuring them.
Sometimes I'm really brave and whip out the tape measure right there on the shop floor.
Once I've generated or reviewed your graded spec, we go through it together and talk about the decisions I’ve made and why/
Ultimately those numbers have to work on actual human bodies, and actual human bodies remain stubbornly unwilling to follow a nice linear Excel formula.
The bit that gives me nightmares
Incorrect grading being discovered after the fabric has been cut is a total nightmare.
Factories will mostly flag the +30cm instead of +3cm but they likely won’t flag a +2cm.
A grading mistake doesn't have to be enormous to cause a problem. A few seemingly tiny increments across several points can completely change the balance and proportion of a pair of jeans by the time you reach the other end of the size range.
And by production, fixing it becomes significantly more expensive than opening the spreadsheet and sorting it out properly in the first place.
Do you need bespoke grading for your jeans?
Not necessarily.
Sometimes a standard grade works perfectly well.
Sometimes your factory's grade is absolutely fine.
Sometimes you need to tweak a few rules.
And sometimes your size range, customer or product means we need to build something much more bespoke.
That's why I don't particularly like blanket grading rules.
The question isn't:
“What is the correct grade for jeans?”
It's:
“What is the correct grade for these jeans, for this customer, across this size range?”
Unfortunately, that answer requires a little more thought than +2cm everywhere.
If your sample size fits beautifully but customers further up or down your size range keep sending their jeans back, you don't necessarily have a fit problem, you might have a grading problem.
Before you change the fit of the jean that is working, it's worth finding out.
If you found all of this boring, I hear you.
Let’s both hold the honesty stick tight and agree that grading is not the sexiest part of launching a denim brand, but neither is refunding a pile of returned jeans.
Getting the grading right is a lot cheaper.
Got a problem with your jeans?
If your fit is off, your samples are going round in circles or your factory communication is making you question your life choices, tell me what's going on.