Fit Check: 4 Tips to Buying the Right Size Jeans Online

Trying to find jeans that fit can often feel like you’ve gone 10 rounds in a boxing match. Or climbed a mountain. Or just completely given up.

Sure, there are hacks to buying jeans in-person, like the waist-around-your-neck trick, but that all goes out the window when you’re shopping online.

If you’re not keen on ordering a bunch of sizes and hoping one fits and then sending the rest back (which is not very eco-friendly), Joshua Chait, Head of Buying for Replay ANZ, has some handy tips for buying the perfect pair of jeans every time.

How to get the right size jeans when shopping online

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Need some help finding the right size jeans? Joshua Chait from Replay has some top tips for shopping online. #jeans #Replay #Replayjeans #sizing

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Seatrise

Remember the days of the dreaded low-slung hipster jeans that revealed everything from your underwear to your bum crack? Thankfully, these days, high-waisted jeans are everywhere. If you’ve got your eye on a pair, Chait recommends checking the seatrise to get the right size jeans.

“Ladies [sizing], I think a really important thing to take note of is the seat rise for high-waisted jeans,” he said. “When you’re looking online at the perfect pair of jeans, you wanna make sure that the distance from the seat to the top of the jeans isn’t actually too long.

“If it’s too long, sometimes it does create a gap at your back when you bend down. We want those jeans to be perfectly formed and fitted to, I guess, your lower body.”

Thigh width

Keep that measuring tape out, because next, you’ll want to check the width of the legs on your jeans — it’ll make all the difference if you want them skin-tight or a looser fit.

“For guys [men’s sizing], I would always lay down your favourite pair of pants that fit you in your room,” Chait shared. “Take a measuring tape from the inseam just to the side of the pants over here and just make sure that measurement fits up to the jeans you’re looking up online.

“That’s to include a nice bit of room for your thigh there. So that way you can make sure that your jeans are nice and skin tight if you want them to be, or a little bit roomy if you want like my jeans over here.”

Fabric

While shopping in-store you can easily check the tag to see what the jeans are made of, shopping online can be a little trickier. If the online product listing doesn’t mention the fabric composition of the jeans, it’s worth messaging the store to find out.

“I have a general rule of thumb where I like to say two per cent of elastane, and that accounts for about five per cent stretch in the jeans,” Chait said. “That makes sure that your jeans will stretch out with you, but always stretch back in and maintain their shape for years to come.”

Converting sizes

So many numbers, but we’ve got one more quick maths hack to finding your perfect jeans. You might be confused by all the size numbers on the waistband — are these jeans a size 28 or a size 10? Actually, they’re both.

“A quick and easy way to [approach] size conversion for jeans is to look at the waist size here and plus the two and seven together to get us a size nine in women’s jeans size,” Chait shared. “And you can do that with a 24. So a 24 is a six — four and two. A 28, which is a 10 — eight and two. So that’s just another quick tip to get you in your perfect pair of jeans.”

Now that you’ve found the perfect jeans, keep them in shape with these tips. And if you’re also on the hunt for runners that fit, we’ve got tips on that too.

N.B. These fit tips apply to people of all genders; the terms men’s and women’s sizing have only been used in terms of the general cut of jeans.