SizeUSA
2004-06-26 15:59:01.162636+00 by Dan Lyke 1 comments
Over at Back To The Kitchen, Jen had a link to an article about the SizeUSA study that the good folks over at (TC)2 just finished up (press releases which all of these articles will be written from...). I'm not sure I made my argument as well as I could have, and I certainly don't mean to detract from the efforts and value of the study, but I mentioned that I wasn't as optimistic as some that this would really help find clothes that fit.
In fact I'm wondering now if it might make it harder to find clothes, if the smaller boutique manufacturers can spend the same $20k that it's taken a lot more to discover before this and get an idea for where their largest market is, then in the worst case the niches will get lost.
Hopefully this won't happen, but: There is no single "size 8", just as in men's trousers there's no single 32w/32i. In fact, it's pretty damned hard to find two designers who use the same position to measure, say, the shoulder width on the same body. Clothing is going to continue to be hit-and-miss, and what we really need are better ways of finding clothing that already exists that fits us rather than thinking that the garments aren't already out there.