The Change Mariner

Digital Scanners Resize America

New York Times:

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But the buzz at her Midwestern agency - and in the fashion buyers' offices of New York and the garment factories of Hong Kong - is that the current specifications for every size, from 1X to women's 8 to men's medium, may soon be sent out for alterations.

In September, the last of 10,800 volunteers stepped into a booth at a shopping mall, stripped nearly naked and submitted to a 10-second body scan under white light. In exchange for $20 in cash, a $25 gift certificate or, in some cases, no giveaway item, the volunteers contributed to a database that could give manufacturers vital marketing information while helping shoppers find clothes that fit, either in stores or online.

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Mr. Lovejoy would not disclose preliminary results, but he did drop one bombshell: of 4,000 women included in the survey, less than 10 percent met the definition of misses size 8 established by ASTM International, formerly the American Society for Testing and Materials, which develops standards through industry consensus for products, systems and services. Yet the fit of today's clothing is often still based on the notion that size 8 is closest to the midpoint of the size range of American women. Some companies, sensing that the standards are obsolete, have already moved the base line up to size 10. The sizing survey aims to substitute data for hunches.

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