A seller size chart is usually an image: a small table, sometimes photographed off a screen, occasionally machine-translated into English that does not survive the trip. It is also the only sizing information most sellers publish, so it is worth learning to read properly rather than squinting at it once and hoping.
We hold 57 of these charts, extracted from the images one seller published beside their items. Everything below comes from working through them.
The rows you will see
Charts vary, but the vocabulary is small and repeats.
尺码 — size
The label column. It may be letters, numbers, or both at once. In our set the labels include plain letters from XXS to XL, bare numbers like 30 and 34, and dual labels such as S(44), M(46) and S(30). The bracketed number is another size system riding along — Italian numbering on some, a nominal waist on others — and it is not a promise about your waist in inches.
衣长 — length
Garment length, shoulder to hem. The most-populated field in our set: every chart we hold carries it.
胸围 — chest
The field that causes the most trouble. See the trap below.
肩宽 — shoulder width
Across the back, seam to seam. In our set it runs from 43 to 81 centimetres, which spans slim knitwear at one end and heavily dropped-shoulder outerwear at the other.
袖长 — sleeve length
Shoulder seam to cuff, unless the sleeve is raglan, in which case the chart rarely says what it did instead.
腰围 / 臀围 / 裤脚口 — waist, hip, leg opening
The trouser set. Leg opening is the hem width, and it is the field that decides whether trousers read as straight, tapered or wide.
建议身高体重 — suggested height and weight
The seller's own recommendation: a body, and the size they would put on it. Forty-eight of our 57 charts carry one.
Trap one: the convention is never stated
Not one of the 57 charts says whether a measurement is taken flat across the garment or all the way around it. Not one.
You can see the consequence in the data. The field we extracted as chest runs from 46 to 172 centimetres across the set — 47 rows below 100, 33 at 100 or above. Both conventions are present, unlabelled, in the same store. A chest of 63 is a flat half-width; a chest of 150 is the way around. Neither chart says so.
Some charts diagram it, with an arrow drawn across a flat garment. That implies flat. An implication is not a statement, and we do not record one as if it were, which is why the convention field on every chart we publish reads as unstated.
Practical rule: if the number is roughly half of what a wearable garment would need to go around a body, it is flat. If it is roughly double, it is around. If it sits in between and you cannot tell, that is a question for the seller, not a coin flip.
Trap two: the height and weight row is an opinion
It looks like the most helpful row on the chart, and it is the least transferable. It encodes the seller's taste in fit, not a measurement.
The proof is in our own set. Take a body of 178cm and 60kg, exactly as printed on the charts. Across the charts that name that body, this one seller recommends XXS on seven items, XS on nine, and S on fourteen. All from one store, all correct, because the garments are cut differently.
Read it as a hint about how oversized the item is meant to be, then go back to the measurements.
Trap three: the tolerance is real
Fifty-six of the 57 charts print a caveat about their own measuring, and 51 of those name a one-to-three-centimetre margin of error on manual measurement specifically. Five charts carry a different note that breaks off mid-sentence before it names who you are supposed to ask — machine translation, abandoned mid-thought.
Take the tolerance literally. Where two sizes sit three centimetres apart on the field you care about, the chart is not able to choose for you.
Trap four: charts do not travel
A chart belongs to an item, not to a store and certainly not to the market. Our 57 charts are all from one seller and they still disagree with each other about what an S is.
Which is why nothing on this site compares chart numbers between sellers, and neither should you. Two stores' chest 63 are not known to mean the same thing, because neither store said what it measured.
What to do with all of that
Measure a garment you already own, in centimetres, flat — the walkthrough is here — and compare it against the chart for the specific item you are buying. If the chart's convention is unclear, ask before ordering, and ask again at QC when someone has the object in their hands.
The published charts we hold are on the seller pages themselves, each with a link back to the image it was read from, so you can check every number against the photograph rather than trusting our transcription. MVT is the store all 57 came from. Why the label is not the size covers what to do once you accept that the letter on the tag is decoration.