Abstract
The apparel industry is replete with assumptions regarding the body-garment relationship. Traditional anthropometry focuses on linear body measurements, which are inadequate to describe and classify the human body-form for apparel pattern development. To enable the development of a body-form based block system, this case study explored the body-garment relationship for a sheath dress to determine if apparel block shapes could be categorized based on distinct body-form variations. A modified version of Gazzuolo’s (1985) body-garment relationship theory guided the development and analysis of the study. Pattern blocks were fit to 39 female subjects, with 16 dimensions extracted from specific pattern components and graphed to reveal between one and five groups per dimension. Visual analysis of the sample’s body scans revealed 27 body-form variations with 99 categorical descriptions. Categorical descriptions were compared to the dimensional values resulting in ten suggestions for a body-form based block system, and seventeen assumptions that require further analysis. In conclusion, this case study discovered multiple body-form variations across a single size, but block shapes could not be identified due to the wide variation in the sample. Future studies should assess a statistically significant sample of individuals with in-depth analysis of a single body region to determine if there are generalizable body-form variations across the population.
Highlights
This case study explores the relationship between the human body and the clothing that covers it by empirically testing the common apparel assumption: If ten women of the same size wear the same dress, it will fit them all differently
Four of the 43 subjects were removed from the sample set due to extreme asymmetry which prevented the symmetrical fit of the garment on the avatars in Optitex©, resulting in 39 subjects for analysis
The fit model is the standard for this sample, and was not included in analysis of the sample, but information pertaining to the fit model is presented in the dimensional and visual results to show how the sample differs from the standard
Summary
This case study explores the relationship between the human body and the clothing that covers it by empirically testing the common apparel assumption: If ten women of the same size wear the same dress, it will fit them all differently. Anyone who shares their clothing with a sibling/friend of the same size can state this fact, but their stories constitute disparate anecdotal evidence affected by individual fit preference. Objective assessment of the body–garment relationship for women who share the same size has not been conducted. This study focused on objective measures of fit for American women aged 18 to 54
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