Technology Fashions a Fit Accompli

At 6 feet tall and 270 pounds, Aaron Schorr’s pants are almost twice as wide (48 inches around) as they are long (31 inches).

“I’m just big,” says Schorr, 43, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. “To get properly fitting clothes is extremely difficult.”

It should get easier.

Acting on recent innovations in apparel manufacturing, a small number of companies are creating moderately priced custom clothing for people like Schorr.

Led by Levi Strauss & Co., which introduced its Women’s Personal Pair Jeans program in 1994, this emerging marketplace offers hard-to-fit customers--large and small--the hope of a better fashion life.

Half of all Americans buy ill-fitting, mass-produced clothes, says David Bruner, a manager at Technology / Clothing Technology Co., or TC2, a research and development firm in Cary, N.C. And only about half of those people bother with alterations. What if they could feed their measurements into a computer, wait a few weeks, pay a little extra (say, $60 for a pair of jeans) and look just as sharp as someone who fears no waistband?

That’s the plan at Interactive Custom Clothes Co., also known as IC3D. The Westchester, N.Y., company has pioneered software that customizes patterns to fit almost any body’s measurements.

“We’re your virtual custom tailor,” says IC3D’s Peter del Rio, an ex-Wall Street bond trader who developed the program.

Relying solely on visitors to its Web site, IC3D has received about 100 orders in its first six months of operation, primarily from the hard-to-fit. “We [sometimes] get bodies that blow the computer’s mind,” he says, acknowledging the occasional processing glitch. “When the computer’s reading measurements it hasn’t seen before, it doesn’t always know what to do. Sometimes it spazzes out.”

Unlike Levi’s, which employs “personal-fit specialists” to record measurements in 30 of its U.S. stores (locally at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa), IC3D depends on customers to take accurate readings on their own, following detailed instructions on the Web site (https://www.IC3D.com). Levi’s sends four numbers (waist, hip, inseam and rise) to a Tennessee factory that spits out $55 jeans in two weeks, while IC3D plugs in 11 to create thousands of variations on its line of jeans. Customers willing to pay $55 to $85 can select the style, color and finish (say, stonewashed). A package arrives in about four weeks.

The concept of mass-customized clothing has been batted about for at least a decade, most prominently in Stan Davis’ 1987 book, “Future Perfect.” But until Levi’s gambled on Personal Pair, which now accounts for 25% of its women’s jeans sales, the logistics of delivering a cost-efficient, timely product intimidated apparel makers.

Now, in hopes of advancing the technology, TC2 is developing a device that will scan the entire body. The machine projects 300,000 pinpoints of light from head to toe, then photographs the body from six angles to produce a kind of 3-D portrait. That data results in a custom pattern. While a few kinks have yet to be worked out--hair or dark skin reads like body mass--a scanner is in use at Custom Foot in Westport, Conn., which makes individually crafted shoes.

“Customer response has been outstanding,” says Laureen Kirsch, marketing director for Custom Foot. “People are very enthusiastic about using [the new technology].”

TC2’s Bruner anticipates that within five years, as further improvements help bring down costs, mass customization will be widely available. He envisions body-scanning equipment in existing stores, incorporated into a mall kiosk or perhaps as the centerpiece of a separate shop--one that would operate as the middle man, providing body scans to clothing manufacturers.

But retail analyst Alan Millstein, publisher of the Fashion Network Report, doesn’t see that happening.

“[Mass customization] will never have any impact on the apparel business in this country because what makes clothes plentiful and inexpensive is the fact that they are mass-produced,” he says.

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As mass-customization technology chases entrepreneurial vision, some companies have already altered their production facilities to accommodate individual customers.

Brenda French, designer and owner of French Rags in West Los Angeles, offers custom-knit jackets, tops, pants, skirts, coats and vests. Although they come in only five sizes (small, medium, large, larger and the “biggest they can knit”), the outfits may be ordered in 60 colors and 200 patterns--significantly more than you would find at Robinsons-May.

“I haven’t changed my yarn in 20 years, so you can come to me with stuff you bought 15 years ago and I can give you something to match it,” she says. “And you can almost design it yourself.” In all, French Rags can tweak its program to knit 450,000 combinations of separates.

French began mass-customizing six years ago, selling items via trunk shows. “As I started selling direct, I learned that one customer wanted the red jacket with the blue pants, and the next wanted the blue pants with the black jacket,” she explains. “Every single woman wanted something different.”

Customers may pay a little bit more for the ironically named French Rags (individual pieces sell for $200 to $500), but French insists it’s worth it. “It’s just a better value,” she says.

The movement toward mass customization of apparel clashes with many futurists’ forecasts that the 21st century would bring standardized clothing. In fact, the opposite is occurring.

With mass customization, “you’re no longer being treated like a cog in the wheel, like a nameless number,” says Joseph Pine, author of “Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition” (Harvard Business School Press, 1993).

And it’s egalitarian, not elitist. “The wealthy have always been able to get exactly what they want because they could afford to pay any price for it,” Pine says. “What’s happening now is that most anybody is going to be able to get exactly what they want.”

He predicts that scanning equipment will be widely used within five years, and could replace 60% to 70% of existing retail business over the next 20 years. But, he concedes, mass producers will never die out completely.

“There will always be people who won’t feel they’re getting value unless they buy something on a sale rack.”

* MORE FASHION NEWS, E2

* The tunic, which survived the fall of Rome, gets its modern appeal from its versatility and ability to camouflage certain assets of the anatomy.

* Skateboarders used to drape themselves in triple and quadruple XL shirts. My, how styles change.