Custom Plus Size Clothing: Grading, Fit and Range Planning
By The Velocity Wear Team
Extended sizes are a range-planning decision, not a box to tick at the end. Two things drive it: how the blank you have chosen is actually graded above 2XL, and how your artwork scales onto a larger panel. Get both wrong and you produce garments that are wide but short with a logo that looks lost, and you lose the orders you never hear about, because a customer whose size is missing does not buy a smaller one.
The Commercial Case, Stated Plainly
A missing size is not a neutral event. In a staff or club order it is visible and awkward: one person ends up in something that does not fit while everyone else looks tidy, and that is the version of your uniform people remember. In retail it is invisible and worse. Someone reaches your product page, checks the size list, finds nothing above XL and leaves. There is no message, no complaint and no data point telling you it happened. The only signal you get is a total that is quietly lower than it should have been.
Extended sizes also tend to be the sizes that sell out first when a range does carry them, because supply across the market is thinner. If you are planning depth, the instinct to order fewer of the larger sizes is often exactly backwards.
Grading Above 2XL Is Where Blanks Diverge
Below 2XL, most blank manufacturers grade fairly consistently: each size up adds a predictable amount to chest width and a smaller amount to body length. Above that, ranges diverge sharply. Some continue a full grade, adding length, armhole depth and sleeve width along with the chest. Others add width almost exclusively, so a 4XL is a much wider version of a 2XL with barely any extra length. That produces a garment that rides up, sits short at the front and fits nobody well.
The fix is dull and effective: read the manufacturer's measurement table, not the letters, and check the progression of body length and armhole across the top three sizes. If length stops increasing, the range is not really graded up there, and you should pick a different blank for the extended part of your run rather than accept it.
What to Check Before You Commit to a Blank
Run through these while you are still choosing the garment, because none of them can be fixed after printing.
- Where the range actually stops. Many fitted and women's cut ranges end at 2XL even when the unisex version of the same style runs to 5XL.
- Whether body length and armhole depth keep increasing above 2XL, or whether only chest width changes.
- Whether the extended sizes exist in every colour you want. It is common for larger sizes to be stocked in core colours only.
- Whether the blank supplier applies a size uplift on larger pieces, so the cost per garment is not flat across your run.
- Whether the fabric is the same weight throughout, since some ranges switch construction at the top end.
Scaling the Print Rather Than Repeating It
A chest print sized for a medium looks under-scaled on a 4XL. It sits in the middle of a much larger panel with a lot of empty fabric around it, and it reads as an oversight even to people who could not explain why. The same is true in reverse for back prints, where a design sized for the largest garment overwhelms the smaller ones.
Most ranges benefit from two print sizes, one for S to XL and one for 2XL upwards. There is also a vertical point: the standard measurement of a chest print sits a set distance down from the collar, but on larger sizes that measurement puts the design higher relative to the body. Dropping the print a couple of centimetres on the extended sizes keeps the visual position consistent. Screen printing charges setup per colour and per screen, so a second print size adds cost. DTF and DTG do not, which is often the deciding factor on a mixed run.
“"A size range that stops at XL is a price list with a hole in it."”
Using the Mixed-Size Minimum Properly
Velocity Wear's minimum is 20 pieces per order and sizes mix freely inside that, which is the practical reason extended sizes do not need to be a separate project. You are not committing to a minimum quantity of 3XL to include 3XL. You can carry two or three of the largest sizes inside a normal run and see what moves before you commit to depth. For staff kit, this is the difference between ordering once and ordering again in three weeks because one person could not be fitted.
Fit Feedback Beats Assumptions
If you are kitting out a team, circulate the manufacturer's measurement table rather than a list of letters. Sizing runs differently between brands, and someone who wears a 2XL in one label may need a 3XL in another. Publishing the same measurements on a retail product page does the same job, and removes a large share of exchanges.
Ordering, Timing and Previewing
Everything runs online: brief, proof and order, then take delivery. The free Design Studio lets you preview placement, which is where a second print size for the extended range is easiest to sanity-check, and the instant price calculator shows live pricing as you change garment, method and quantity. Bulk discounts reach up to around 40% as quantities rise. Production begins at artwork approval, with screen printing and embroidery around 10-15 working days from approval and complex jobs nearer 15-20. UK tracked delivery is typically 2-5 working days after dispatch, with worldwide options available.