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The Problem of Non-Standard Sizes in Women's Clothing

By Rain Noe - April 26, 2011

in Tech

"One size fits all" is the challenge of a furniture designer, up to a point. You design a chair or sofa that a 95th-percentile anthropomorphic shape will fit into, and then everyone that encounters that piece, from leg-dangling five-year-olds to 300 pound hulks, tries to make their body fit into it comfortably.

Fashion designers have a more daunting task, as they have to produce the same garment in a variety of sizes. But even after they pull that off, a new problem emerges, one that any female clothing shopper can tell you about: There's no standardization of female sizes in the clothing industry. According to this article in the Times, "Take a woman with a 27-inch waist. In Marc Jacobs's high-end line, she is between an 8 and a 10. At Chico's, she is a triple 0." Even the Gap and Banana Republic, both part of the same company, have different sizes between them. Then there is the problem of "vanity sizing," whereby companies arbitrarily reduce the number sizes so women don't feel fat.

One emerging solution to this problem is the MyBestFit body scanner, a piece of technological overkill that nevertheless seems necessary because of the ridiculous lack of standardization. You step into their circular chamber, which is designed to be installed in shopping malls, and nearly 200 antennae scan your body using radio waves that penetrate through your clothing to map the body beneath it. It then cross-references your body profile to a database of manufacturer's sizes.

Now we know how you can convince the wary to get into those body scanners at the airport; just tell 'em you'll give 'em a printout of their ideal clothing sizes broken down by brand.

The good news is her clothing will fit.
The bad news is she'll still say things like "wicked cool"

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steve

13 years ago

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This scanner looks pretty doomed to remain a concept due to its size and the realities of cross referencing all those fashion label's fit / measurements... but as a shoemaker I can vouch for the annoyance factor of non-standardised sizing. When I ask someone their shoe size and get "7 and a half" as an answer I am now aware that its a useless bit of info when it should explain exactly what size they are. With there being US, UK, european, japanese etc etc sizings the only way to get something useful is to measure their feet myself. Silly really.
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Andy McDonald

13 years ago

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I've always thought the concept of 3D body scanning to be ridiculous as long as it involves having to be measured in a retail store using some huge piece of kit (not least because they capture far more information than you need to calculate standard body measurements). It's a bit like 3D TV with glasses - it's just never gonna fly. Looks like TC2 (based in North Carolina) are working on a home system that uses a Kinect camera which I feel is much more likely to succeed.

More information here: http://t.co/c01x70X
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