Starting in 2002, researchers from Donghua's institute of fashion design have collected body-shape information from more than 3,000 women and 2,000 men throughout the country.
Each woman was measured in 82 places, including head, chest, waist, hips and leg, and men in 60 places.
It is first time such a large-scale and detailed measurement research has been carried out in the country, Donghua officials said.
Zhang Wenbin, a Donghua professor and the research project head, said the database information would be passed on to garment designers and manufacturers to make clothes more suitable for Chinese people.
"Chinese people might frequently find themselves unsuitable for Western clothing. Difference in body shapes is the biggest cause of that," Zhang said.
For instance, the research reported that the ratio between Chinese people's body height and head length is 7.3 on average, slightly lower than that of Western people.
A medium body size for men in east China, including Shanghai and neighboring Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, is 175 centimeters tall with a 90cm chest measurement, according to the research report.
Zhang said the university was planning to work with a Shanghai garment factory to launch a system to tailor-make clothes for customers via the Internet.
The system will allow locals to have their three-dimensional body shape measurements taken by a scanning machine. The information will then be transferred via the Internet to the manufacturer.
(shanghai daily 2007-5-12 )
