Men's and women's body types in the global garment sizing systems

Abstract

Abstract Apparel companies define their target customers to integrate consumers’ needs into their product development processes. The sizing standards play a significant role in ready-to-wear garment business. Consumers’ body build and sizes are different according to gender, age, and body type. The consumers’ morphological feature of the one geographical area has changed with immigration, aging, and lifestyle change. In this study the way of defining body types in the standard garment sizing systems published in USA., UK, Germany, Japan, and Korea were compared. The results of this study show that most of the systems classified the body types by the index value. The chest-waist drop value was used for men’s body type classification. Women’s body types were defined by hip proportion. The hip-bust drop value was used for it. German and European garment sizing systems provide a wide range of men’s body types. US men’s garment sizes are developed for very conservative body type. US women’s garment sizing system has had clearly defined women’s body types. The Misses body types projected in the US garment sizing system had changed as women’s waist girth got bigger compared to the past. In 2011 the US Misses sizes were divided into Curvy Misses size and Straight Misses size by the hip-waist drop value. The Curvy Misses sizes have smaller waist girth and larger hip girth than the Straight Misses sizes. Keywords: body type, garment sizing system, global standard