EN 13402 - Background

Background

There are three approaches for size-labelling of clothes:

body dimensions
The product label states for which range of body dimensions the product was designed. (Example: bike helmet labelled "head girth: 56–60 cm", shoe labelled "foot length: 28 cm")
product dimensions
The label states characteristic measures of the product. (Example: jeans labelled with their inner-leg length in centimetres or inches: i.e., not the inner leg length of the intended wearer)
ad-hoc size
The label provides a size number or code with no obvious relationship to any measurement. (Example: Size 12, XL)

Traditionally, clothes have been labelled using many different ad-hoc size systems. This approach has led to a number of problems:

  • Country-specific or even vendor-specific labels create additional costs.
  • Ad-hoc sizes have changed with time, often due to "vanity labelling", an inflation in body dimensions associated with a size, to avoid confronting aging customers with uncomfortable anthropometric truths.
  • Mail-order purchasing requires accurate methods for predicting the best-fitting size.
  • For many types of garments, size cannot be described adequately by just a single number, because two independent body dimensions have to match for a good fit, sometimes even three. (This is a problem in sizing jeans.)
  • Scalar ad-hoc sizes based on 1950s anthropometric studies are no longer adequate, as changes in nutrition and life styles have shifted the distribution of body dimensions.

Therefore, the European standards committee CEN/TC 248/WG 10 started in 1996 the process of designing a new modern system of labelling clothes sizes, resulting in the standard EN 13402 "Size designation of clothes".

It is based on

  • body-dimensions
  • the metric system (SI)
  • data from new anthropometric studies of the European population performed in the late 1990s
  • similar existing international standards (ISO 3635, etc.)

Read more about this topic:  EN 13402

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