Body measurements chart: 28 entries, eight size scales
A body measurements chart runs to 28 entries, not three. Twenty-seven of them cite a clause of ISO 8559-1, seventeen you can take without help, and the filled-in chart comes back as sizes on eight scales at once. You fill it in once: give the set a name and it is waiting for you next time, already filled, so the next size costs a glance rather than another session with the tape.
What a named body does for you
It saves itself
Name the set once, up to 40 characters. There is no save button: from that moment every edit goes into that saved body on its own, so there is nothing to forget to press.
Next time it is already filled in
Open the page again in the same browser and the chart comes back with your numbers in it. Working out a size stops being a session with the tape and becomes a glance.
Several bodies, side by side
Yours, your family's, yourself a year ago. Each is a card, the cards sit in one grid, and the same entry lines up in the same column across all of them.
Children keep their own list
Children's bodies are stored apart from adults', and each list remembers which body you had open — moving between the two screens resets neither.
You can see which body is current
Each card carries its name, how many of the 28 entries are filled in, and when it was last updated. Which one you added to last is a fact on the card, not something you reconstruct.
Rename, delete, send
Any body can be renamed, deleted behind a confirmation that says the measurements go for good, or sent as a link straight from its card.
What goes on a body measurements chart?
Twenty-eight entries, spread over five areas of the body: eleven on the torso, eight on the legs, four on the arms, four on the feet and one on the neck. The three everyone knows — bust, waist, hips — settle tops, dresses and skirts between them, and stop there. Nothing in those three tells you where the shoulder ends or how long the inseam is.
Twenty-seven of the 28 cite a clause of ISO 8559-1, the standard that fixes where each measurement starts and ends. Arch length is the exception: it has no clause in that standard, and the chart says so rather than borrowing the number next to it.
| Area of the body | Entries | What they settle |
|---|---|---|
| Torso | 11 | Tops, dresses, shirts and bras — bust, chest under the arms, underbust, waist and hip girth all sit here |
| Legs | 8 | Trousers, jeans and skirts — crotch length and inseam decide the length that girth alone cannot |
| Arms | 4 | Sleeve and cuff — a jacket that fits at the chest can still miss at the arm |
| Feet | 4 | Shoes — foot length on its own leaves the width and the arch unanswered |
| Neck | 1 | A shirt collar, which is sized on a scale of its own |
Which body measurements can you take on your own?
Seventeen of the 28. The remaining eleven need a second pair of hands, and the chart marks them before you pick up the tape rather than after you have written down a number taken at an angle.
The split is not about how hard a measurement is. It is about whether you can hold the tape and read it in the same moment: everything taken down the back, across the shoulders or against the floor is read exactly where you cannot see it.
| Entry | Why it cannot be taken alone |
|---|---|
| Height | Read against a mark on the wall that has to sit level with the top of your head — you cannot set the mark and read it at once |
| Shoulder length | Runs from the neck point out to the shoulder point, over the top of the shoulder where the tape is out of sight |
| Shoulder width | Measured across the back, between the two shoulder points |
| Back length to waist | Runs down the spine from the neck to the waist |
| Front length to waist | The tape has to be held at the neck point while the reading is taken at the waist |
| Armhole circumference | Goes around the armhole, through the armpit and over the shoulder, with the arm hanging relaxed |
| Sleeve length | Taken from the shoulder point down a relaxed arm — and the arm holding the tape is not relaxed |
| Total crotch length | Runs from the front waist, between the legs, to the back waist |
| Inseam length | Measured from the crotch down to the floor |
| Outseam length | Measured from the waist down to the floor |
| Arch length | Taken on the foot while you are standing with your weight on it |
What does the chart turn the numbers into?
Eight size scales at once: EU, RU, JP, US, UK, FR, IT and the S–M–L letters. You do not choose one — the same set of measurements is read against all eight, because a wardrobe bought online is rarely all on the same scale.
The eight do not carry equal weight, and the chart says which is which. Three rest on a published standard, three on what shops in that market have settled on between themselves, and two are arithmetic on the European ladder rather than standards of their own.
| Scale | What it rests on | What that means for the number |
|---|---|---|
| EU | A published standard | The ladder is defined outside any one shop, so the number is comparable between brands that follow it |
| RU | A published standard | The same footing as EU — the two differ in arithmetic, not in authority |
| JP | A published standard | Defined nationally, which is why it does not sit at a fixed offset from EU |
| US | Retail convention | No standard behind it — the number is what shops in that market have settled on, and it drifts between them |
| UK | Retail convention | The same footing as US — comparable within a brand, not across brands |
| INT (S–M–L) | Retail convention | The girths behind the letters come from EN 13402; the letters themselves answer to nobody, which is why one shop's M is another's S |
| FR | Derived | Printed by arithmetic on the European ladder — France has no clothing standard of its own |
| IT | Derived | The same ladder, different arithmetic — Italy has no clothing standard of its own either |
How is a chart you have already filled in kept?
Give the set a name of up to 40 characters and it becomes a saved body you can open again. That is the whole point of filling the chart in: the next size you need is read off a chart that is already filled, rather than measured again from the beginning.
There is no save button. Once the set has a name, every later edit is mirrored into it — a button that can be forgotten is exactly how a filled-in chart gets lost, so naming is the only thing you do on purpose. After that, closing the tab, coming back tomorrow and opening the page again next month in the same browser all land on the same chart.
One case is worth knowing before you meet it. If you have filled in a chart, given it no name, and then open a different saved body, the unnamed one has nowhere to go. The app stops and asks rather than choosing for you — name this one, or let it go deliberately.
Can you keep more than one body on the chart?
As many as you name. Each saved body is a card, and the cards sit in one grid where the same entry lines up in the same column — the waist of one body sits directly above the waist of the next, so you read down a column instead of opening each in turn.
Children are kept in a list of their own rather than mixed into the adult one, and the two lists remember separately which body you had open. Moving between the two screens does not reset the other.
What is not there yet, plainly: no view that prints the difference for each entry between two bodies, and no chart of how an entry has moved over time. The cards let you compare by eye; the arithmetic of the difference is not done for you.
How do you give your measurements to someone else?
As a link. The set travels inside the link itself, so the person who opens it sees the measurements and the sizes without installing anything, and opens the link without an account.
Before the link is copied, the app says what that means: the measurements are in the address, and an address goes into browser history, into the message you send it in, and into the logs of whatever it passes through on the way. That warning comes first, not as a footnote afterwards.
Two limits worth naming. Someone who receives a link cannot yet file it into their own list of saved bodies — they can read it, not keep it. And there is no export to a file, so a set does not move between browsers on its own.
Does this work as a body measurements chart for weight loss?
Partly, and the part that does not work is worth saying first. You can keep «me in March» and «me now» as two named bodies and read the same entry down one column of the grid. What the app does not do is chart an entry over time or work out the difference for you — there is no graph and no trend line here.
For anyone following a change, that makes this a record rather than a tracker. It keeps the numbers you took, in the units you took them in, and puts them next to each other. Everything past that you do yourself.
Where do the numbers behind the sizes come from?
Every table on this site names its source and the date it was last checked, under the table itself rather than on a page of its own.
For the measurements, the reference is ISO 8559-1, which fixes where each measurement starts and ends; 27 of the 28 entries cite a clause of it. The guidance shown with each entry is deliberately not transcribed from the standard — that procedure text is paywalled — so it follows ordinary tailoring practice instead, and says so.
For the sizes, each scale carries its footing, as set out in the table above: a published standard, a retail convention, or arithmetic derived from the European ladder. A number resting on a convention is not dressed up to look like one resting on a standard.