The fashion industry

An English reader meets der Konfektionär and pictures a sweet shop. In the German garment trade the word means a clothing manufacturer: the firm that has garments cut and sewn in quantity and sells them under its own labels. The two words are cousins, not strangers — both go back to Latin conficere, to make or prepare — but German sent the sweet branch to das Konfekt and gave the maker of sweets another name altogether, der Konditor. The clothing branch runs through die Konfektionsgröße, the size on the label, and ends at the rail of Stangenware. The rest of the list follows a garment along the same road: draped on the stand, sampled and counter-sampled, ordered before the season and reordered during it, sewn somewhere far away and, if too many were made, sold off as leftover stock.