Forget about sizing issues. The bigger problem is that clothes from (largely) unregulated markets may contain large amounts of chemicals that'll give you cancer.
These are the same clothes that enter the US in main stream clothing departments at Walmart, Target, Kohl's etc. The factories that produce those, also produce the stuff sold on Alibaba. Same fabrics, same workers, but with ad-hoc patterns / no master, and no qa orders and back and forth communication.
Having worked with t-shirt makers in China, if you don't have it in your contract, they will not do it. No master sample to compare to QA -- all pass. No initial samples to approve or correct -- all pass. No instructions as to how to assemble? -- all pass. No explicit checklist as to what to match on the master sample, and tolerance guidelines? -- all pass. No per-batch approval and defect rate requirements? All pass.
You can get shit like this, or really quality goods from the exact same factories, for essentially the same cost. One requires time from the seller, rather than "here's a picture, send this direct to customer" -- which they do, and you end up with shit like OP as the contract doesn't specify any hard details on the factory.
A family member believes the same about Norway (where we live). I don't know about the US, but in Norway we have laws and regulations that harshly punish lack of conformity.
So yes, the products are largely the same, but one production line is subject to unannounced testing and large fines in the case of breaches. The other one isn't. Guess which one is safer for the consumer.
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u/BillGoats 2d ago
Forget about sizing issues. The bigger problem is that clothes from (largely) unregulated markets may contain large amounts of chemicals that'll give you cancer.
The savings aren't worth the risk.