27 years of designing: what two decades of fittings taught me about pole wear that actually fits

I started fashion designing when I was sixteen.

I'm forty-three now. Which means I've been cutting patterns, working with stretch, fitting garments on real bodies, and pulling apart my own samples for twenty-seven years. Longer than some of the polers in my classes have been alive.

I don't usually lead with this. But every now and then someone messages and asks why a pair of our shorts is twice the price of something they could click on from a quick scroll-through ad — and the real answer is in those twenty-seven years.

Stretch is not one thing

The first thing fashion school doesn't really teach you — and what twenty-plus years of stretch garments will — is that "stretch fabric" isn't a category. It's about a hundred categories.

There's two-way stretch and four-way stretch. There's fabric with memory (snaps back after you bend) and fabric without (sits a little baggy after class three). There's lightweight scuba, structured power mesh, soft cotton-elastane blends, sport-grade lycra, the heavier compression weaves. Each one moves differently. Each one grips the pole differently. Each one ages differently in the wash.

Most pole wear that flops in the first few wears? It's not bad craftsmanship. It's the wrong fabric for the job. The brand picked something that looked right at a sample stage and didn't test it through real classes, real sweat, real stretches.

Twenty-seven years of working with stretch means I can usually feel the difference between a fabric that'll last two years and a fabric that'll last six months just by handling it. Before a piece even gets to fittings, we've already ruled out the materials that would slide, pill, lose elasticity, or burn out at the seams.

Why we fit on 15+ different shapes

Here's the part most pole wear brands skip entirely. A lot of activewear is fitted on one or two sample sizes — usually a size 8 or 10 fit model — and then "graded up" mathematically. The numbers get bigger but the shape assumes everyone's a scaled-up version of that one body. Which is why a top can fit beautifully at size 10 and feel completely off at size 18, or vice versa.

Every RARR piece gets tried on across roughly ten to fifteen different body shapes before it goes to production. Different busts. Different waists. Different hip-to-waist ratios. Tall, short, broader-through-the-back, narrower-through-the-back. I'm watching for things you'd never see on one fit model:

• Does the leg of the short ride up on a fuller thigh, or does it stay where I designed it?
• Does the waistband sit at the flattering line on a longer torso — or does it cut across the softest part of the belly?
• Do the straps dig into a shoulder that carries more bust weight?
• Does the seam at the side of the bra sit smooth on a smaller back with a fuller chest?

Every one of those tiny things is a re-pattern, a re-cut, sometimes a whole new sample. That's why the timeline from sketch to released piece can stretch over months — and why our plus size pole wear actually fits, instead of just being a bigger version of something designed for a size 8.

The waist — the bit I obsess over

If you've ever tried on a pair of activewear shorts that looked great in the photos but somehow made your middle look heavier in real life, the answer is almost always: waistband placement.

For pole wear specifically, the waistband has an even harder job:

The trick is the curve of the waistband itself — most brands cut it straight. We cut ours on a gentle curve so it sits along the natural waist instead of cutting across it. That one detail makes more of a difference than any colour or print ever will.

What this means for you, on the pole

You don't need to know any of this to wear our pieces. That's kind of the point. The whole job of design is for the customer to slip something on, feel good, and not have to think about why.

But if you've ever wondered why a particular pair of RARR scrunch bum shorts felt right when other ones didn't — it's not luck. It's a fabric chosen because I know how it'll behave on a pole after fifty wears. A pattern cut on a curve I learned to draw twenty years ago. A fit tested on bodies that are probably more like yours than the original sample model. A waistband rebuilt three times before it sat where it needed to.

Twenty-seven years sounds like a long time when I say it out loud. But every piece you wear in our studio or yours is carrying that whole stretch of learning. That's what we're really making.

A small thank you

Most of you have never met me. You've ordered online, you've worn the piece, you've left a review or DM'd a question, and that's the whole of our relationship. I want you to know I take all of it personally. Every fitting we do is in part for the person who's going to walk into a class for the first time and need their outfit to be the least of their worries.

If you ever have a fit question — what shape you are, what to look for in a piece, why something didn't sit right — message us. After all this time, fittings are kind of my whole love language.

Ready to find your fit? Browse our Australian made pole wear collection — or read Polewear for Real Bodies for the full story on fit and inclusivity.

— Rachel