MELBOURNE: Revelations that funding for a national sizing survey has stalled have raised fears Australia will be marginalised as other countries standardise their systems.
The Size Oz survey -- conceived by industry group SCALE (Sizing Consortium of Australia Landmark Evaluation) in 2006 -- would have used the latest tools in 3D body scanning to create accurate sampling techniques, confirmed Jo Kellock, president of project founder the Fashion Technicians’ Association of Australia (FTAA).
Having received $6600 from the Victorian Government to create a tender, the $300,000 to complete a pilot had been stymied by structural inflexibilities in the Government’s Strategic Investment Program (SIP).
“It’s very disappointing as sizing goes directly to the issue of sales. This was the first time that industry was united on this; SCALE had the backing of the FTAA, the TFIA [Council of Textile and Fashion Industries of Australia] Standards Australia and several major retailers.”
Australia lagged global economies including Japan, China, Korea and Mexico -- which had plans to profile their populations -- and Europe, which was implementing the CEN [Comité Européen de Normalisation or European Committee for Standardization] system, Kellock said.
“When CEN comes in it will mean swing tags and labels will have to comply. How will our products be able to compete globally?”
With a 1920s Berlei survey and a 1970s study by Woman’s Weekly magazine now redundant, incorrect sizing affected all sectors, but particularly womenswear and corporate apparel – the latter due to a lack of direct interface with end users, she said.
Daisy Veitch, SCALE advisor and founder of mannequin and fit research company Sharp Dummies, described Australian sizing as “a mess”. An estimated 50 per cent of women were forced to buy outside their age demographic because of sizing, while companies had developed their own systems, she said.
Womenswear brand Feathers’ designer Lanette Porritt – who confessed to being “pretty shocked” that there was no standard when she joined the company four years ago -- had since created one based on Feathers’ target customer, as had Natalie Wakeling, founder of plus-size denim brand Embody, who claimed “vanity sizing” -- “downscaling the real size to cater to consumers’ egos” -- had skewed the system.
SCALE advisor Kate Kennedy – who is researching 3D body scanning under an International Specialist Skills (ISS) Fellowship -- said sizing was increasingly a cultural and marketing issue, with systems varying widely between markets and retailers ignoring the discrepancies.
“There is certainly an argument now that goes: “identify your target market and get over it,” she claimed.
However the lack of a standard had also given rise to unacceptable discrepancies within the same label, the FTAA’s Jo
Kellock maintained. While industry representatives including the TFIA – which was unavailable for comment as <I>Ragtrader<P> went to press -- had unsuccessfully lobbied Government to re-structure the SIP, she hoped funding could still be found.
“If we could have $50,000 to hire a project manager that would be a start. We have worked on this voluntarily for over two years; that’s how important it is.”