Size does matter, fashion world told

Date: 29/03/01

By Peter Chapman

Business Correspondent standards experts want to introduce EU-wide clothing and footwear sizes to end the confusion caused for shoppers buying abroad or over the Internet.

Project leaders at the Cologne-based Research Centre of the Clothing Industry say they are close to finalising technical details and will seek approval from industry next year in time for final adoption by the European Standards Committee (CEN) by 2003.

Uta-Maria Groth, head of the centre, said the new pan-European standards are likely to consign archaic national size systems to the scrapheap.

"The problem at the moment is that there are more systems than member states of the EU," she told European Voice. "A female customer for whom German size 38 is a perfect fit has to buy size 40 in France, size 44 in Italy, in Britain size 12 and Scandinavian countries size C19.

"She buys size 39 shoes and size 6 trainers. Her tights are size II and her T-shirts medium or small. Her bra size could be 80B or 85C."

And the problem is made worse, she said, by fashion firms turning out clothes designed to fit supermodels instead of the vast majority of their female customers. "We did a study of 2,000 German women," she said. "Everybody is creating clothes for Claudia Schiffer - but it showed that only 2% of them have the same measurements as her. "

She added: "The system [we are proposing] would have uniform terms, definitions and body measurements. Sizes would be based on measurements of the naked body, not the garment."

Approval of EU norms for clothes and shoes will end a 30-year battle between the leading fashion houses in Paris and Milan, who each argued their sizes were the right ones.

Designers had also expressed fears that a uniform system would prevent them from interpreting sizes in their own way.

But Groth insists that designers will still be free to create their collections in the way they want - while shoppers with non-supermodel figures could opt for bigger, looser sizes.

Researchers hope to complete a linked project using high-tech 3-D scanners to measure a sample of men and women across the Union to build a reliable database of sizes. This would lead to the creation of a common European size table - helping firms in other markets such as furniture and car design as well as fashion.

Standards experts want to introduce EU-wide clothing and footwear sizes to end the confusion caused for shoppers buying abroad or over the Internet. Project leaders at the Cologne-based Research Centre of the Clothing Industry say they are close to finalising technical details and will seek approval from industry in time for final adoption by the European Standards Committee (CEN) by 2003.