Aha, I think I understand better now.
I have a couple suggestions for workarounds with current functionality:
1. Layer portfolio’s
Taking the T-shirt example it would be something like this:
Clothing portfolio
- T-shirt portfolio
- T-shirt Small project
- T-shirt Medium project
- T-shirt Large project
- Pants portfolio
- etc...
You could then add updates that apply to a group of clothing to the group that houses those.
Note: You will lose timeline functionality as soon as you add a portfolio to a portfolio. If this is a dealbreaker you could also use a separate portfolio that only houses the projects for that purpose.
- Merge projects
If a status update is the same for all projects, there might also be an argument to merge the projects.
You can differentiate which task applies to which variant using a custom field. Multi-select seems most logical, as you can then also have tasks that apply to all variants.
You can use different tabs to filter for tasks related to one type only.
More info on designing tabs here: 🪄 Design magical tabs with group, sort, and filter!
Dashboards can be filtered to include only tasks with certain custom field values.
3. Use a message.
A status update only can be added to one project at a time - which makes sense to me - but a message can be sent to multiple projects. If it is about the message rather than the status this might be a solution.
None of these seem a perfect solution for what you’re asking, but I’m hoping you find one that is a step in the right direction for you. 