Page 228 - Anthropometry, Apparel Sizing and Design

222 Anthropometry, Apparel Sizing and Design

body and the corresponding construction level of the pattern block or clothes. Because
of fashion trends, these two levels sometimes are located in the same place, and some-
times are not. For example, construction of the waist level may be higher or lower than
the natural waist line; to describe this difference in the vertical direction, a special ease
E BL called “ease to back length” is used. Ease allowance is marked as E i , where E is the
ease symbol and i is a symbol (abbreviation) of body measurement. For example, E BL
shows the difference between two heights of waist levels: first, of the body at the
narrowest natural anthropometrical level; second, of the clothes at the construction
level formed by the waist darts. Fig. 9.1B shows the situation where the construction
level is lower than the natural anthropometrical level, so E BL >0.
For upper body clothes, such as suits, jackets, coats, shirts, and so on, there are
other eases, as follows:
for bodice (torso):
– an ease to bust girth E BG and its distribution between back (ease to back width E BW ),
armhole (ease to armhole width E AHW ) and front (ease to front width E FW ). These
eases can be used as full measurements (E BG , E BW , E FW ) or as half ones (E 0.5BG ,
E 0.5BW , E 0.5FW );
– an ease to waist girth E WG (E 0.5WG );
– an ease to hip girth E HG (E 0.5HG ).

The eases E BG , E WG , E HG are responsible for silhouette or style, but E BW , E AHW , E FW
are influenced by the profile contour of clothes;
for sleeve:
– an ease to armhole depth E AHD ;
– an ease to arm girth E AG .
– an ease to arm length E AL .
In practice, these mentioned eases are used in the following situations:

(1) for new pattern block making when the ease amounts are known and they can be added
directly to body measurements to calculate the dimensions of front, back, etc.
(straight task);
(2) for analyzing pattern blocks that were drawn earlier when an ease amount was unknown
(opposite task). To find the ease values, it’s necessary to know the body measurements used
for the pattern block drawing, methods of pattern block shaping, number of textile materials
and their properties, methods of production (sewing), etc. For example, to analyze the his-
torical pattern blocks, the shrinkage after heat-moisture treatment should be taken into
account before an ease calculation (Kuzmichev et al., 2017).
Each ease should be designed as a complex value including the following components:
(1) physiological component, which should provide easy breathing and limited pressure (com-
pression) on lymph nodes and blood vessels;
(2) ergonomic component, which should allow movements in accordance with the functions of
the clothes. This ease allowance is equal to the difference between maximal and minimal
perimeters of the wearer’s body, which is obtained from the human body in standing and
moving postures (Chen et al., 2008);