In the aftermath of the shocking news coming out of Chicago, the Financial Times' Vanessa Friedman has a interesting story about how technology has influenced sizing in fashion. Janice Wang, a 31 year old entrepreneur runs Alvanon, a business that makes fit mannequins for the fashion industry. Her secret?
The idea was simple: create anatomically accurate mannequins using three-dimensional scanners.
Back in the old days, designers used actual people--fit models--to pin their protoype garments on, and then pattern makers sized up or down. Of course, many fit models were of the same unearthly proportions as photographic and runway models, and you can see where the everyday shopper could have problems. Mannequins tended to be a craft item, made by hand, and not really representing human forms, either.
"Have you seen a toddler? They're all bums and tums," she says. "But if you look at a mannequin of a toddler, it's a little shrunken adult body, like a little alien. If you're making clothes and using that as the model, it's not going to work."
Wang's taking her business into the world of luxury brands, by advising companies on how many of what size they need to make to ship to China.
To this end Alvanon recently scanned the bodies of 32,000 Chinese consumers: when the results are compiled Ms Wang should be able to tell a client brand if there is any point in it, say, shipping extra-large sizes, not extra-smalls, to the Beijing store, and how many size 6s it will need to maximise sales.
Maximizing sales in Chicago might mean shipping more plus sizes.
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