Men's Clothing Size Converter

In short A man has three sizes at once and they are measured on three different parts of him, so there is no single men's size to convert. For a jacket or suit the number is the chest in inches and the European size is that plus ten, so a 40 is a 50. For a shirt it is the collar in inches and the European size is that in centimetres, so a 15½ inch collar is a 39. For trousers it is the waist in inches and the European size is that plus sixteen, so a 32 is a 48 — and that sixteen is not arbitrary, it is the jacket ladder reached through the classic six-inch drop between chest and waist, since (32 + 6) + 10 is also 48. The detail almost every other converter gets wrong is what the European jacket number means. It is described everywhere as half your chest in centimetres, and that is only true near size 40. Test it: a 34 inch chest is 43.18 cm at half, and the convention says 44. A 46 inch chest is 58.42 cm at half, and the convention says 56. The two ladders step differently — two inches against two European points, when two inches is really 2.54 of them — so they cross once, around 39, and drift apart in both directions until the European number is nearly three centimetres short of the measurement it claims to be. Use chest + 10 because that is what shops use, but do not believe the explanation printed next to it.