Everything else on this site is about what other people said. This one is about a tape measure and forty minutes of your own time, and it is the single highest-return thing you can do before a first order.
The goal is not to learn your measurements. It is to build a small reference table of garments you already own that fit correctly, in centimetres, so that a seller's chart becomes a comparison rather than a guess. The size letter cannot do that job, and it is not the seller's fault that it cannot.
Start with the garment, not with your body
Body measurements are the wrong input here. A 100cm chest tells a chart nothing useful, because the garment has to be wider than you by an amount that depends entirely on how the piece is cut. A boxy shell and a slim knit that both fit a 100cm chest will have flat chest figures many centimetres apart.
So pick objects instead. Go through your wardrobe and find:
- one t-shirt that fits the way you want t-shirts to fit
- one hoodie or sweatshirt
- one knit
- one jacket or coat
- one pair of trousers or jeans
Five garments. That is your reference set, and it will serve every order you make afterwards.
The setup
A soft tape measure, a flat surface, and centimetres — not inches. Every chart we hold is in centimetres, all 57 of them, and converting under pressure at checkout is where mistakes happen.
Lay the garment face up, flat, seams straight, no ripples. Button or zip it. Smooth it, do not stretch it. Ribbing and heavy knits will happily lie about their own width if you pull, and a knit measured under tension is the classic reason a piece that "matched the chart" turns up snug.
Every figure below is a flat measurement: the tape lies on the garment, across it, and you do not double anything.
Chest
Find the armpit seams. Measure straight across from one to the other. That figure is the flat chest, and it is the number that most often decides whether a piece works.
Shoulder
Across the back, from the point where one shoulder seam meets the sleeve seam to the same point on the other side. On a dropped-shoulder or raglan cut this measurement stops being meaningful — note that it does not apply rather than forcing a number.
Sleeve
From the shoulder seam down the outside of the arm to the cuff edge. On raglan sleeves, measure from the neckline instead and label it as such, because that number is not comparable to the first.
Length
From the highest point of the shoulder next to the collar, straight down to the hem. Some charts measure from the back of the collar instead, which will read a couple of centimetres shorter. Either is fine as long as you know which one you did.
Waist, hip and opening
For trousers, measure the waistband flat across the top, the hip roughly 18–20cm below the waistband, and the leg opening flat across the hem. Note the inseam separately, from the crotch seam down the inner leg.
Turning that into a decision
Now open the seller's chart for the exact item you want. The charts we hold from MVT use exactly the fields above — length, chest, shoulder, sleeve, waist, hip and opening — which is typical of the format.
Compare like for like, and rank the fields by how much they matter for that garment. For a t-shirt, chest and length. For trousers, waist and opening. For a coat, shoulder first. Then pick the size that lands closest on the fields that matter, and let the rest fall where they will. No chart will match your reference garment on every line, and a size chosen by averaging all seven fields is usually a size that fits nothing.
One caution before you commit: 51 of the 57 charts we hold print a one-to-three-centimetre tolerance on their own numbers. If your two candidate sizes are three centimetres apart, the chart cannot resolve that gap and neither can you. That is the moment to ask the seller or your agent to measure the actual piece.
Where this method fails
It assumes the chart describes the item you will receive. Nothing on this site verifies that. We hold the seller's published numbers and a link back to the chart image; we have not bought those garments and re-measured them.
It also assumes you can read the chart's convention, and you usually cannot — see reading a Chinese size chart for why the same field name can mean two different things in the same store.
Finally, it does nothing for shoes. No footwear chart exists in the set we hold, and a flat tape across a sneaker tells you nothing.
The backstop for all three is the QC stage. When the agent has the item in a warehouse, you can ask for measurements of the actual object, and how to read QC photos covers what else to look at while you are there. That request is free, and it is the only point in the process where a number describes a thing rather than a table.