THE FIT PROBLEM

Today’s women's sizing in the USA was created beginning in 1946, during World War II. Women at the time were either sewing their own clothing, or hiring tailors to make their clothes for them. As women entered the workforce and rural America expanded, catalog purchases grew. In an effort to create some sort of standard, like men had from the Civil War uniform sizing, the government measured 15,000 Caucasian military women (post food rationing). 

​

In 1952, the Mail Order Association (with Sears & Roebuck as the lead) demanded a government regulated fit standard. The above measurements were used, and averaged out to the hourglass shape, assuming from the sample base that the only shape was hourglass.  Visually to most people when looking at a small size, women's shapes look similar enough that it was taken for granted. They published their study with results in 1958, and had sizes ranging from 8 to 38 with notations for height and girth. The flawed results became the basic standards for fit models, and patterns. 

​

In 1983, Ronald Reagan lifted the standards, which enabled designers to offer vanity sizing where each business adjusted clothing sizes to fit their customer base, or their designer’s aesthetic. Vanity sizing was used by some brands to make women feel like they were smaller, thus the name.  It caused a false sense of body image, and that's where body dysmorphia comes in for women - especially young women.

​

The result is where we are today, with the main problem being clothes that are fitted don’t fit. The industry is trying to solve the problem with stretch and oversized apparel, but it doesn't work for everybody and for every style or garment.  In the women’s apparel industry all fashion brands create their own distinct sizing using different models to give variety, but that means everyone has to hunt for items that might fit. They typically use a singular fit model (live or digital), and then size (grade) their patterns up, or down a half inch to achieve their own range of sizes. Scientifically, only 20% of woman’s bodies change like the base hourglass shape. Today, we must address a much more ethnically and genetically diverse audience with shapes and sizes being in huge variance - and because over time there has been a lot of change in lifestyle and eating / exercising habits.

​

About 20 years ago, Cricket Lee debuted shapes and her sister invention the first online FitFinder. Year after year, many technology data companies started creating online algorithms much like her system to filter women through to brands that might fit them which was the opposite intention of the Fitfinder. Unfortunately, these companies may get accurate data on woman’s bodies, but rarely give the woman her right fit because the brands are still using this antiquated fit premise. These apparel data technologies will keep providing data, trying to filter women through to something that might fit, but the customers are still frustrated with the results. This means there is a lot of new technology in the market, but they are still using an outdated method - still based on the regional average applications established so long ago, resulting in much waste in returns and inaccurate planning. In our recent research we discovered that only 30% of women will even consider being scanned, even when offered compensation.

​

There are also many more issues caused by misperceptions of the human body, fit competition, and inconsistent applications throughout the supply chain. This old competitive fit paradigm obviously no longer works as a point of differentiation for the fashion brands.