Global warming has excellent timing. My jeans are getting worn out.
Selfish as it may be, I am going to enjoy the fact that I can wear skirts and dresses instead of my poorly fit jeans. Don't underestimate the challenge of finding properly fitting jeans.
But recently I've become more hopeful that my waist-hip-leg ratio will finally meet its match, without having to resort to jeggings. A friend claimed there was a pair of jeans that would mold to your body perfectly if you showered with them. Legitimate?
This summer, I learned about more promising technology when I drove my brother to his freshman orientation. At the Dean's welcoming address, I endured a typical speech but then got to watch the school's research in fiber science and apparel design. Fiber and apparel design is one of my career crushes - it's what happens when you fuse fashion design and engineering.
Fiber and apparel design research led by Susan Ashdown at Cornell University reexamines our current model of clothing manufacture, a process dating back to the Industrial Age. Presently, someone like Michael Kors designs something too fabulous for words, fits it perfectly onto a size 00 model and then introduces it to the market. By the time his design is mimicked and it trickles down to a pair of affordable jeans, the waist size is too big, the legs are too long and the backside just doesn't work. Does this problem sound familiar?
Ashdown proposes to reverse that model of fashion and follow the trend of the iPhone and other markets to reshape products to fit the needs of individual consumers. Her model begins with me sitting behind a computer and designing my own clothes. Then I take a 3D body scan. The scan and the clothing design get sent to a manufacturing company. Not only will I have perfectly fitted clothing delivered right to my door, but companies won't over-manufacture textiles (a serious cause of pollution in cities across China), and stores won't overflow with excess clothing.
Sometimes it's more practical to shop online using the designs from department stores. If you buy clothing online, it could be useful if you could see how the clothes would look on your body. Using a 3D scanner, Ashdown hopes that we can see how the clothes available in stores fall on our bodies.
I went to the H&M website and found that they have implemented a similar idea using the "Dressing Room" link. That link was fun, but it would be more useful if I was size 000. Even the models on Dress Up Barbie don't look that skinny.
Half an hour of playing Dress Up Barbie "Balcony by the Sea" and a tube of cookie dough gave me the insight I needed to understand the more powerful effects of using a 3D scanner. In Ashdown's lab, a 3D scanner can be used not only to analyze an unfitted bra - a problem that plagues eight out of 10 women in the United States - but also to improve a heavy firefighter uniform, or even the seats on airplanes. By scanning and understanding the typical shape of an airplane traveler, airplane companies can make the best fitting seats, which probably makes a big difference on that 20-hour plane to that study abroad program in China.
So if using the 3D scanner is the direction in which clothing manufacture is headed, how will this all change the way we dress and shop? Of course, all of this technology is a long time away from a personal computer, but if it pans out, the effect will be amazing. Maybe the scanner will help reduce clothing overflow, harmful textile dye pollution, consumer time or even bad jeans.
JasminSadegh is a junior majoring in civil engineering. She can be reached at Jasmin.Sadegh@tufts.edu.
