Somewhere in France, there’s an office worker wearing nothing more than skivvies while a 3-D projection of his or her visual image is sent to a computer screen nearby. And, while the country is known for love and romance, there’s no hanky-panky here. The worker is just helping the country design products that will fit the French a little better.
As part of a “National Sizing Campaign” in France, workers from participating companies are volunteering their precise body measurements, no fudging, by agreeing to have their images scanned by a device that offers 85 of the individual’s measurements. Heads, hands, legs, feet, hips, height all get a precision treatment.
The project, sponsored by a handful of French companies hoping to put the measurements to work for a better fashion fit as well as to provide manufacturers of chairs, cars, sports equipment and other consumer goods with an accurate look at today’s French body, is intended to mitigate what a New York Times report called “the growing tension between the dreams of [France’s] designers and the reality of the expanding French physique.”
Regis Mollard, professor of applied anthropology at the University of Paris, assisted in setting up the study. Mollard noted that scanning gives a more precise set of measurements as people have a tendency to fib a little about their measurements when merely quizzed.
In addition to the benefits for the consumer and designer, manufacturers could see a profit-based benefit as well. Currently some French clothing manufacturers and mail-order houses are reporting up to a 25 percent rate of return on clothing that consumers say didn’t fit.
source: LA Daily News