‘India Size’ garments all set to hit the shelves soon

w Delhi, February 17

You may soon be able to walk into a shopping mall and try on clothes with the ‘India Size’, tailored to suit the body measurements of the country’s populace.

The government will also begin collating information for “trend forecasting” for textiles this month, using commercial intelligence to determine what could be in vogue in the near future, a move bound to exert major influence on global fashion trends, a top official said.

In March, the government will launch an exercise to measure a group of people to prepare a comprehensive ‘India Size’ chart, which can be adopted by the country’s apparel industry.

“We want we should have an Indian size for two things. It can boost our retail market. South Asian size will also get a fillip, plus our own diaspora which is outside, we will become influence drivers for foreign companies also. We are actually rolling out the exercise in March itself,” Textiles Secretary Raghvendra Singh said.

He said the government is trying to complete the “sizeable” project as soon as possible, so that a standardised size chart can be prepared for the ready-to-wear industry, based on body measurements of the domestic population. The project approved earlier by the government will entail measuring of 25,000 male and female Indians in six cities across six regions: Kolkata (East), Mumbai (West), New Delhi (North), Hyderabad (Central India), Bengaluru (South) and Shillong (North-East).

Using 3D whole body scanners and computers, hundreds of measurements will be extracted.

Providing well fitting garments in the absence of a standardised size chart is proving to be a big challenge for the domestic textile and apparel industry, which is projected to reach USD 123 billion by 2021 and holds the fifth position in apparel imports. Till date, 14 countries have successfully completed national sizing surveys: the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Korea, China and Australia. — PTI

Why the need

• At present, India's apparel industry uses size charts which are tweaked versions of sizes of other countries, so returns of garments are in range of 20-40% 
• A large percentage of shoppers face difficulty in finding clothes that fit perfectly according to their body measurements, as there is no standard size chart
• There are also differences in anthropometric built of people in different geographical regions