Ironically, one area that both genders can have trouble with is crotch seam length, though typically on opposite sides of the garment — but in women’s clothing it’s often worse than men’s due to the spectrum of “extra high rise” to “extra low rise” that’s added to the mix in women’s clothing. Aligning with the hourglass-mostly point of the article, the most common is High Rise, which corresponds to the higher ‘resting point’ on the torso cylinder for a waistband when women have gained fat deposits in the usual rearward hourglass places (as otherwise the waistband sits at a severely sloped angle from back to front). For rectangle or triangle folks, you will rarely find Low Rise or Extra Low Rise that have the appropriately-shortened crotch seam. For spoon folks, you have to shop at shops that cater to spoon shape, because most major retailers only cater to one specific shape and stretch simply isn’t enough to compensate for the rectangular to spoon difference (as Lululemon discovered a decade ago or so). That’s because two women with upper leg circumference 30 may have hip sizes varying from 20 to 60, depending on which body type they have and where their fat deposits are — and the two ends of that spectrum do not indicate anorexia/obesity, either. Body shape and fat levels vary that widely under normal healthy circumstances. I envy men’s jeans for their (relative, but not zero) simplicity.
Now that is an interesting dimension (ha, ha) of this I hadn't yet appreciated. I'm used, as a dude of fortunately-normalish proportions and skinny-enough (but not actually skinny) size, to only looking at a single measurement for rise (crotch to waist, measured on the front of the garment) and getting a really good idea of what I'll be dealing with, just from that. From your description I think I've understood the issue you're highlighting, and yeah, that'd be an annoying extra factor to deal with (and I'm sure it's really hard to get two rise measurements out of anybody, just about ever).
You've got me thinking back to a particular brand and style of (not at all fancy) jeans my wife used to love, that they discontinued, and she's never quite found another that works for her as well. From how she described it, in hindsight, I bet this measurement is the key thing she's not managing to nail on her attempts to find a replacement. Wish she still had a pair, I'd go measure front- and back-rise on them so we'd know what to look for!
If only there was an Anna's Archive for retail clothing dissected into clothing patterns..
If only, but wouldn't dimensions work just as well as pattern/silhouette visualizations? And finding retail dimensions is the hard part.
Hey, how close are we to being able to 3d print our own clothing?
Show me a sewing machine that can cut, sew, hem, iron, and qacheck a stretch-fabric garment, and I’ll show you a trillion dollar domestic manufacturing opportunity! Until then, look up the object called “sewing pattern”; it’s just a clothes blueprint that assumes you only have a 2D printer (scissors or a pizza cutter) and need a physical guide for the 2D fabric cutter (which will be you), an instruction sheet for sewing (also you), and the assumption that you understand that you should have ironed the fabric beforehand (throw it out and start over). Sewing is an extremely old human craft and may perhaps be the most difficult challenge faced by industrial robotics. Threading a loom for woven fabrics is equally as difficult and is still done by hand, too. Note that most clothing doesn’t fit in a normal desktop cutter because fabrics are typically 40” wide so you end up having to escort the entire process using tool-assisted human labor. They have, at least, figured out how to make robotic top-sewing machines for quilts, so as long as your stitches are in 2D and the fabric is already sewn together, you can have it sew the linear mile of stitches to finish the quilt (but only after weeks to month of piecework and assembly).
Ironically I think the hourglass high-rise means I can wear (some) women's pants without tightness in the crotch, and the extra back rise is great when sitting.