Book provide a pattern for innovation

The Fashion Technicians Association of Australia (FTAA) has launched a definitive pattern guide for the womenswear sector.

Titled The Fashion Design System - Pattern Engineering for the 21st Century the 480-page book was produced in line with the TCF sector's forward culture of innovation, said FTAA president Toni Stalls.

Describing authors Kath Berry and Lois Hennes as "two of Australia's most experienced apparel industry educators and researchers", Stalls said the book offered an "innovative and simplified pattern engineering system for the production of women's clothing".

"The relevance to our industry and members is that this system is based on five different body shapes identified in the study: The Changing Size and Shape of Australian Women (Berry 2001). Kath and Lois also played a major role in the Rip Curl Scientific Sizing Study of 2003.

"In this age of cost and waste reduction, innovation and skills upgrades, which has created the need to prepare trainees, technicians and product developers for changing circumstances, this book provides the latest information as a companion resource for anyone working with patterns and specifications."

To"The move away from size to shape represents a conceptual breakthrough in the classification of women's garments, as identified by Professor Maciej Henneberg PhD, DSc, Wood Jones Professor of Anatomy University of Adelaide, who wrote the Foreword to the publication," Stalls said.

Henneberg claimed that, "...with this book, the garment industry enters the new era of knowledge-based industry, using information provided by the science of the human body - anatomy - and precise measurement of its variations - anthropometry".