Researchers from the College of Agriculture are reshaping the apparel industry with a new study that could change how clothes are sized and                                    manufactured.
The research strives to create a new database of average American body sizes and encourage a method for clothing brands to make items fit customers’ exact measurements.
Textiles, apparel design and merchandising assistant professors Laurel Romeo and Casey Stannard are leading the study with the help of a high-tech 3-D body scanner called the Size Stream.
Their focus is to study modern American body shapes and how clothing brands can use this data to make clothes custom fit to customers’ body shapes.
Romeo and Stannard would like to use the data to transform “grading”, which are the measurements of average clothing sizes. 
Current grading measurements are based on incorrect assumptions about body shape and make it even harder for those who buy plus-size clothing to find the right fit, Romeo said.
“The assumptions are that as a person gets wider, they also get taller. So with plus size clothing, people perhaps sometimes look sloppy. The clothes don’t fit them correctly,” Romeo said. 
Romeo said she and Stannard will hopefully create new algorithms for the grading method, which will align better with         modern American measurements.
Current clothing sizes are based on a grading system from a study done after the end of World War II, over 70 years ago. 
“Our population is very different and much more diverse. We have many more body shapes and sizes than we did at that time,” Romeo said.
The study includes 5,000 participants of all ages, especially those 18 years or older who are currently in a weight-loss              program. 
Each participant stands in a curtained area while the Size Stream’s surrounding scanners measure every part of their body. Within seconds, a virtual avatar appears on the computer screen with their exact  measurements. 
Romeo said she hopes the results and use of the Size Stream will bring the apparel industry closer to its future of  “purchase activated manufacturing.” 
With purchase activated manufacturing, a store would have its own body scanner and hold only one item of each piece of clothing. When a customer decides which piece they want, they step into a body scanner. The store would then send the customer’s measurements to a local manufacturer to be made within the hour.
Romeo said this shift would bring more apparel manufacturing into the United States and make the industry more sustainable because no fabric would be wasted.
“It’s a whole new paradigm of how we do business in the apparel industry,” she said.