Page 25 - Anthropometry, Apparel Sizing and Design

20 Anthropometry, Apparel Sizing and Design

Methods have been proposed wherein a designer or a consumer with no knowledge
of patternmaking can design customized garments with highly detailed geometries.
Li and Lu (2014) propose a method for creating garment models in 3-D on individual-
ized avatars by combining 3-D parts from existing garment examples. With the plethora
of technologies available for capturing and analyzing body scan data, all patterns should
fit. If they don’t fit, then it should be interpreted either as a problem of data analysis or its
application by the designer (Scott and Sayem, 2018).

1.5 Fit

Even though most consumers consider fit to be the single most important aspect of a
garment that influences final purchase decision, it is the least documented and least
understood element of the garment supply chain. As a result, RTW garment industry
is plagued by fit problems that cause dissatisfaction to consumers and losses to man-
ufacturers due to lost sales and clothing returns. The lack of visualization and under-
standing about the diversity in body shapes, changes in body shape with size or age,
use of models with idealized body shapes in the fitting room, and the lack of factoring
of movement data into fit analysis are some of the factors that contribute to poor fit of
garments.
Fit is defined as the relationship between garment size and body size. The under-
standing of fit, however, is different for academicians who study fit, practitioners who
finalize fit, and the consumers’ experience and expectations of fit. Hardly any system-
atic studies have been conducted to study the fit of actual mass-produced garments on
a varied population (Gill (2015)). Experts agree that a good fit can be achieved
through a combination of five garment factors, namely, ease, line, grain, balance,
and set (Erwin et al., 1979). When all these five factors are in alignment, the garment
conforms closely to body shape, lies smoothly without any wrinkles, allows adequate
ease for movement, and appears to be a part of the body. According to Hutchinson
(1977) the critical area of the body from the fit point of view is the shoulder.
A garment that fits the figure perfectly between the neck and the horizontal line of
the figure at the level of the armhole would fit the whole body well. It is therefore
clear that the shoulder not only is important from aesthetic point of view but also
is crucial for ease of movement of the upper body. But a scientific method to achieve
this perfect fit is not known.
In traditional RTW systems, fit of a garment is determined, assessed, and controlled
by fit experts at the production site. Though a customer can complain about the poor fit
and return garments that do not fit, a two-way communication between the manufac-
turer and the customer is not there. New digital technologies are changing this. The
process of fit assessment is undergoing rapid and dramatic changes, fuelled by
advances in digital technologies, deep learning, data analysis tools, and AI. For a
detail review on developments in the field of fit, the reader is referred to the works
of Gill (2015) and Miell (2018).
A variety of digital interfaces and platforms are now available directly to the con-
sumer to evaluate garment fit in online clothing purchase space. Websites providing