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CNN Live Saturday

Great Britain Tries to Make One Size Fit All

Aired August 25, 2001 - 12:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: When it comes to women's clothes, size really does not matter. And that's because one size does not fit all. A woman can be a size 10 in one dress, size eight in another, and perhaps a size 12 in yet another outfit. And if that does not sound frustrating, I don't know what is. In the women's fashion industry, it is the fit that counts, not the size.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your better designers always have a better sizing as far as a little bit more fabric in it, it's a little looser cut, but when you get into your moderate and your less expensive lines, they are going to trim it in a little bit, they are going to cheat just a fraction on the sizing so they can save yardage in fabric, which saves them money.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What I would say is probably every other designer is going to say, like, my size is true to size. And theirs are all wrong.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The market can do that because the consumer has the luxury of going to the store and trying on a garment and seeing whether or not it fits her. They can call it size eight or size two if they want to, and she will just keep trying on garments until she finds one that fits her.

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NELSON: So why doesn't industry standardize the sizes in clothes? Britain is going to try it. Ten thousand people, men and women, are volunteering their measurements to be used as a sort of a blueprint for the nation, and Philip Treleaven who is running this survey joins us now from London by telephone. Mr. Treleaven, why don't you explain what's going on?

PHILIP TRELEAVEN, U.K. NATIONAL SIZING SURVEY: Well, just like in the United States, consumers are really confused about size, and the manufacturers and retailers don't know the shape of the customers' bodies.

So we are conducting a survey of 5,000 women and 5,000 men, and we are taking 140 measurements off each person so that we can really take a sort of a census or a map of the population's bodies.

NELSON: So what will be the impact once this survey is done and a woman goes into a store and you have got -- what -- will you have something in the store to be able to measure her?

TRELEAVEN: Well, the way that we are measuring people for the sizing survey is we are using some American 3-D photo booths produced by a company called TC Squared in North Carolina, and these can measure people's bodies very accurately in a couple of seconds to plus or minus one millimeter, and this is going to give us some very accurate body data.

And then the retailers -- we have got 18 of the biggest U.K. retailers sponsoring this study -- they can then take that and actually make their garments fit more of their customers.

NELSON: Yeah, but then you are going to have all kinds of minute sizes? Are the manufacturers going to want to do that?

TRELEAVEN: Well, there is two things: You will -- they will still make size ranges, you know eight, 10, 12, et cetera, but there will be more standardization amongst different retailers, and when someone goes into a shop, they can expect that the size will actually fit them better.

NELSON: All right. Well, we will watch the survey, watch the result and the experiment, and thank you for joining us. Philip Treleaven running this survey on women's measurements in Great Britain.

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