의류제품
A Proposal for a New Size Label to Assist Consumers in Finding Well-fitting Women’s Clothing, Especially Pants: An Analysis of Size USA Female Data and Women’s Ready-to-wear Pants for North American Companies
- 출판일2009.11
- 저자
- 서지사항
- 등록일
2011.04.27
- 조회수
358
In the USA, Canada and Europe labels that disclose garments’ composition, origin,
commercial brand or price at point of sale are required. No law governs garment size labels
and underlying measurements. Standard size chart determination is not an easy task and
has always been challenging for national institutes of standardization, manufacturers and
retailers. Moreover, size standards are voluntary, therefore those who initiate garment
orders can decide whether or not to adhere to national standards. Since size labels and
standards are voluntary, some of the buyers or their intermediaries prefer to target
specific ‘silhouette and shape’ markets by adapting their measurements, while others play
the vanity sizing card. Confusion occurs as companies in North America all use the same
numerical size labeling systems. The research discussed in this paper demonstrates that
manufacturers in North America size garments (pants) according to their own, specific
target markets (which differ from one another), to cover most of the population; they then
label these garments with reference to a single numerical code size labeling system which
leads to chaos in the market place. Besides being challenging for the apparel industry, the
size label system creates an ambiguous situation for the consumer who cannot rely on the
size label to identify a good fitting garment, and thus is spending undue time trying clothes.
We conclude that the time has come to standardize the size label in order to provide better
fitting clothes for ready-to-wear.