Fashion Terms — the Apparel Search fashion terminology directory
Ready-to-wear, also called prêt-à-porter, is the term for factory-made clothing sold in finished condition in standardized sizes. You can walk into a store, buy the clothing and wear it — no special measurements or tailoring are needed. Ready to wear does not, however, mean ready to fit perfectly: manufacturers use different size specs, and no exact uniformity of measurement currently exists in the fashion industry.
Ready-to-wear has the same meaning as Prêt-à-Porter.
Ready-to-wear or prêt-à-porter is the term for factory-made clothing, sold in finished condition, in standardized sizes. In other words, you can walk into the store, buy the clothing, and it is ready to wear. You do not need to take special measurements or have tailoring done to the clothes. However, you obviously should try the clothing on in the fitting room to make sure that the clothing fits. Just because it is ready to wear, it does not mean that it is ready to fit you perfectly.
The fashion industry tries to utilize some standards, but to be honest, most manufacturers use different size specs. An exact uniformity of measurement does NOT currently exist in the fashion industry.
Learn the difference between ready-to-wear and haute couture.
You also may have interest in learning about made-to-measure clothing.
Are you searching for the perfect pair of denim jeans to add to your trendy wardrobe?
Ready-to-wear is so familiar that its novelty is easy to miss. For most of history, clothing was made for a known body: sewn at home, or ordered from a tailor or dressmaker who measured the wearer. Ready-to-wear reversed the process — garments are designed, graded into a run of standardized sizes, manufactured in quantity and only then offered for sale, and the buyer's task is to find the size that fits best rather than to commission the garment at all. That reversal is what makes modern clothing retail possible: stores can stock finished inventory, shoppers can compare and take purchases home the same day, and manufacturers can spread the cost of design and pattern-making across thousands of identical garments.
The term's French form, prêt-à-porter, carries the same meaning and is used for the designer end of the same system — the seasonal collections shown by fashion houses as finished garments in standard sizes, distinct from their haute couture. The contrast is one of production logic, not quality: couture begins with a client, ready-to-wear begins with a size range. Made-to-measure sits between the two, starting from an existing pattern and adjusting it to the individual, which is why it costs more than ready-to-wear and less than fully bespoke work.
The system's one persistent weakness is fit, and it comes directly from how the clothes are specified. Each manufacturer drafts to its own size specs — its own assumptions about the body behind each size label — and grades between sizes in its own steps. There is no exact uniformity of measurement across the industry, so a size that fits from one brand may run large or small from another, and even a correct size is a statistical approximation of an individual body. That is why the fitting room, the size chart and, for trousers, measurements such as the rise remain part of buying clothes that were, in every other sense, ready to wear the moment they left the factory.
Ready-to-wear (prêt-à-porter) means clothing made in a factory and sold finished, in standardized sizes, so the buyer can purchase it and wear it without measurements being taken or tailoring being done first.
No. Ready-to-wear is made to standardized sizes, but each manufacturer uses its own size specs, so the same nominal size can fit differently between brands. Trying garments on in the fitting room is still important.
Haute couture is one-of-a-kind clothing made to an individual client's measurements. Made-to-measure adjusts a standard pattern to one buyer's measurements. Ready-to-wear is produced in size runs before any individual buyer is known.