BODY SCAN TECHNOLOGY will help apparel firms improve the fit of their mass-produced clothing by providing valuable measurement data on consumer populations. Most systems for sizing ready-to-wear garments have been based on very limited information. The last major anthropometric (body-measurement) survey of the civilian population for apparel sizing purposes was conducted in 1941 and is not accurate for today's body shapes.
Generally, apparel firms have based their decisions about sizing on experimentation and subsequent feedback from their customers. This is not a very effective system for gathering data, as most consumers make decisions about garment fit at home or in the fitting room and do not communicate their experiences reliably or at all.
Few anthropometric surveys have been conducted because of the high labor costs associated with measuring large numbers of people with traditional tape measures. Body scanners have changed this. Apparel companies will benefit from several anthropometric studies that have scanned or are currently scanning representative groups of people from the population. The goal of these proprietary studies is to gain a better understanding of the current human sizes and shapes in order to develop sizing systems that fit most of the population.
The CAESAR study, an international anthropometric study conducted in the United States, the Netherlands, and Italy, was funded by the automotive, airline, and apparel industries and its data will be used by funding members in the design of many products. The Textile and Clothing Technology Corporation, [TC]2, organized a consortium of university and industry partners to collect 12,000 scans of men and women in 50 locations in the United States to create a database of civilian anthropometric data for the apparel industry. The data from this study, called SizeUSA, will be available to the original partners in the study and to others for a fee.
