Various Men's Body Shapes and Drops for Developing Menswear Sizing Systems in the United States

Abstract

Menswear body types are often labeled on garments (to indicate how the garments are designed to fit) with indicators of a size category such as regular, portly, and stout, athletic, or big and tall. A drop (relationships between the chest and waist girths) is related to the fit of a tailored suit. However, current standards are not designed for various drops or body types. There is not enough information of categorizing men's body shapes for the apparel sizing systems. In this article, a set of men's data from SizeUSA sizing survey was analyzed to investigate men's body shapes and drops. Factor analysis and a cluster analysis method were used to categorize men's body shapes. In the results, twenty-five variables were selected through the factor analysis and found four factors: girth factor, height factor, torso girth factor, and slope degree factor. According to the factor and cluster analysis, various body shapes were found: Slim Shape (SS - tall ectomorphy), Heavy Shape (HS - athletic, big & tall, endomorphy and mesomorphy), Slant Inverted Triangle Shape (SITS - regular, slight ectomorphy and slight mesomorphy weight range from normal to slightly overweight), Short Round Top Shape (SRTS - portly and stout, endomorphy). Body shapes were related to fitting categories. SS and HS were related to big & tall fitting category. SITS was related to regular. SRTS was related to portly and stout. Shape 1 (31%) and Shape 2 (26%) were related to current big & tall category. Shape 3 (34%) were related to regular. Shape 4 (9%) were in portly and stout category. ASTM D 6240 standard was the only available standard that presented a regular fitting category. Various drops were found within a same chest size group; however, this study revealed great variances of drops by body shape.