A Survey of Women's One-size-fits-all Clothing in Mail-Order

Abstract

Dimensions of “one-size-fits-all” clothing are not specified in the Japanese Industrial Standards, and the actual sizes are unclear.The present study investigated the specifics of women's one-size-fits-all mail-order clothing. The one-size-fits-all represented 1.5% of the women's clothing available from 10 mail-order companies, of which 337 items of the clothing for upper body were selected for further study. A majority of the clothes (54.0%) were knitted, and thus possessed considerable elasticity and were capable of adapting to the body shape of the wearer even if the size was unclear. However, despite being labeled as one-size-fits-all, 89.0% of the items were based on medium size dimensions and thus could only conform to a limited range of body shapes.Furthermore, despite being for sale by mail-order, a range of the actual body measurements and/or the item's finished sizes were not always clearly stated. It is therefore necessary to confirm the dimensions of clothes prior to purchasing.