Dispatch 001
"MEDIUM" IS A COLLECTIVIST FICTION
Consider the standard medium shirt. It assumes, with the confidence of a five-year plan, that millions of unrelated humans can be sorted into a single torso category because a warehouse would like fewer bins. The sleeves are a compromise. The chest is a compromise. The neck is a compromise. The entire garment is a negotiated settlement between your body and the inventory software.
Standard sizing is useful. We are not monsters. A shelf full of identical shirts would be economically impossible if every purchase required a tailor, a measuring session and a conference on the philosophical basis of shoulder slope. The problem begins when useful shorthand becomes unquestioned truth. "You are a medium" sounds suspiciously like an assignment.
Our position is simpler: a size label is a convenience, not a jurisdiction. If a medium fits you, wear it. If the body fits one size in the chest and another in the sleeve, the body has not failed. The label has merely encountered a more complicated market.
Practical consequence
When fit matters, write down actual dimensions from either your body or a shirt you already like. Keep those dimensions. They are more portable than a brand's size name and more useful when comparing garments. If your favorite shirt measures 22 inches pit-to-pit, record that. If you prefer centimeters, record 55.9 cm. If you prefer a proprietary unit based on a machinist scale taped to your workbench, define it and prepare to explain yourself.
Dispatch 002
THE METRIC SYSTEM IS INNOCENT. MANDATORY ANYTHING IS THE PROBLEM.
Some libertarians hear "metric" and immediately begin polishing a yardstick inherited from a grandfather who distrusted France. This is unnecessary. The centimeter has not personally harmed you. It is a small line on a ruler. It does not vote, tax, regulate or know what the European Commission is.
Metric is excellent for tailoring because decimals are convenient. Imperial is excellent for tailoring because many people already think in inches. A tape measure containing both systems is not ideological compromise. It is a bilateral trade agreement printed on fiberglass.
Use the system that makes your measurement clearer. If a sleeve is 34.5 inches, say that. If a chest is 108 cm, say that. If you mix them, label them. The tailor's actual enemy is not the wrong unit system. It is an unlabeled number in a text message sent at 11:47 p.m. that says only "42."
The Ungoverned rule
No mandated unit. No unlabeled unit. Those two principles can coexist peacefully, which is more than can be said for most standards committees.
Dispatch 003
A FIELD GUIDE TO UNITS WE REFUSE TO BAN
Inches: familiar, easy to read on tailoring tapes, and divisible into fractions that let a person casually write 17 3/8 while pretending this is simpler than decimals.
Centimeters: compact, decimal and useful for precise garment measurements. They remain welcome despite the unsettling efficiency.
Millimeters: excellent when precision becomes a hobby. Less excellent when the customer writes "chest 1067" and forgets the unit.
Barleycorns: historically equal to one-third of an inch in English measures and still famous through shoe sizing history. Using them for a dress shirt will not improve the shirt but will dramatically improve the story.
Hands: conventionally four inches in horse measurement. If you report a 10.5-hand chest, please include a note explaining why.
Cubits: historically variable, which makes them philosophically excellent and operationally terrible. Define your cubit before using it.
Private units: entirely acceptable if reproducible. "One red block on my workbench" is better than "roughly this much" only if the red block remains available and nobody uses it to prop open a door.
A unit is just a shared reference. The freedom part is choosing the reference. The engineering part is making sure somebody else can reproduce it.
Dispatch 004
THE BUREAU OF SLEEVE LENGTH HAS LOST JURISDICTION
For years, officials at the Bureau of Sleeve Length roamed department stores with clipboards, quietly determining that your wrists should stop wherever quarterly inventory required. Today that reign ends, mostly because the Bureau never existed and we finally noticed.
Sleeve length is one of the easiest dimensions to get wrong because people measure from different start points. Some shirt systems use center-back neck to wrist. Custom garments often use shoulder point to cuff. Both can work. Neither works if one party assumes the other method.
Our preferred declaration is explicit: name the start point, name the end point, state the quantity and state the unit. "Shoulder seam to desired cuff, 34 inches" is useful. "Sleeve: 34" is an invitation to a minor textile crisis.
The deeper lesson is annoyingly practical: standards are not evil when they are voluntarily shared conventions. They become absurd when the convention is treated as more important than the person it was meant to help. Use standards. Define terms. Reject bureaucracy. Measure twice.
Dispatch 005
THE GOVERNMENT DID NOT HELP YOU GROW THAT TORSO.*
Our founding position remains unchanged: if you pay sales tax for a shirt, you're part of the problem. Two adults agree to exchange a shirt for something shiny. A third party arrives, has contributed no buttons, and demands a percentage. We call that a hostile acquisition of your left sleeve.
The Department of Revenue Response was established to address this matter. It consists of an unplugged fax machine beneath a portrait of Murray Rothbard. During its first fiscal year, it processed zero inquiries at a cost of zero dollars. We have nominated it for every government efficiency award while refusing the application forms.
No taxation without removing yourself from the premises
Someone suggested "taxation with representation." We considered it. The representative wanted a salary, a pension, an office, and a special committee on shirt affordability. By the third meeting, we could no longer afford the shirt. Representation has been returned to sender in a box of raw oats.
Our accountant proposed a tax deduction. We objected to the implication that we first needed permission to keep our own cuff. He then proposed that we stop inviting him to dinner. This was the first mutually satisfactory agreement in the history of the finance department.
We don't file taxes. We don't ask permission. We sew in silence. The silence is occasionally interrupted by someone explaining marginal tax rates to a mannequin that has not consented to the conversation.
Dispatch 006
YOUR MONEY IS BACKED BY A PROMISE. OUR SHIRT IS BACKED BY A BACK.
NO USD. NO VISA. NO FEDCOIN. The policy is printed above the till, beneath the till, and on the till, which is a cigar box containing a silver round and a strongly worded essay. The till has no internet connection and therefore considers itself the most secure bank in North America.
We accept Monero, PirateChain, physical gold and silver, Bitcoin, ammo, non-GMO seeds and barter*. Each medium presents unique operational challenges. Gold is heavy. Seeds expire. Bitcoin conversations do not. PirateChain requires the bookkeeper to close every monthly report with "ARRR," which has measurably improved morale.
The free market has priced your canoe
A customer recently proposed half a canoe. Our valuation department asked which half. The customer accused us of imposing centralized standards on watercraft. Negotiations have entered their fourth week. Everyone remains free. Nobody has a shirt.
We support your right to invent money. We do not automatically support your exchange rate. One KyleCoin is not worth twelve ounces of silver because Kyle announced it from his shed. Kyle may appeal to our independent arbitrator, a second shed whose monetary policy is even less accommodating.
If you insist on dollars, you are welcome to take your business elsewhere. That is how voluntary association works. Our cashier will be under the counter explaining the gold standard to a stapler until the emotional damage subsides.
Dispatch 007
BUT WHO WILL BUILD THE ROADS? APPARENTLY ALL OF YOU.
Forty-seven private road operators have answered the question. Unfortunately, they have each built six feet of road between our undisclosed sewing facility and the nearest dead drop. Your shirt now crosses forty-seven jurisdictions, each more hostile to jurisdictions than the last.
Road One accepts silver. Road Two accepts oats. Road Three accepts only a token issued by Road Three and redeemable for nothing on Road Four. Road Four is a libertarian book club that has not yet agreed whether a bridge constitutes collective action.
The invisible hand has requested exact change
Our driver carries eleven wallets, two chickens and a notarized declaration that notarization is illegitimate. He is currently negotiating access to a pothole whose owner considers it a premium suspension-testing facility. Estimated arrival: when mutually agreeable.
We explored shipping by carrier pigeon. The pigeon demanded equity. We explored a drone. The drone formed a homeowners association over airspace. We explored walking, but the boots had independently negotiated a labor agreement with the socks.
For now, your garment travels in a crate, satchel, or box of raw oats, pursued only by the relentless logic of our own operating model*. We have achieved complete independence from centralized logistics and, increasingly, logistics.
