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Shopping for clothing can be an exercise in frustration.
For most female shoppers, pants that fit lengthwise are a size too big. Jeans that glide easily over wide hips are baggy at the waist.
Dresses cut for a plus-size physique look more like a muumuu than Miu Miu.
Tall or short, plus-size or pear-shaped, women often have the same complaint: It's hard to find fashionable clothes that fit. Without a tailor on speed-dial, getting a good fit is a matter of trial and error.
"I just wanted a pair of pants that fit and didn't look like my grandmother's," said Tricia Kordalski, who developed a quirky strategy for finding size 6 pants to fit her 5-foot-10-inch frame. She walked straight to the rack, tipped her head upside-down and eyeballed the lowest hanging trousers. When she finally tired of limited choices, Kordalski founded Long Elegant Legs, a catalog retailer that caters to women 5-foot-10 and up.
But many female shoppers still face an endless pursuit of the "right" size, even though major retailers like Gap and J.C. Penney are adjusting their selection to match real women's curves. The problem: Sizing standards are now decades old, resulting in store racks filled with clothes designed for a woman with an hourglass figure --- estimated to be 8 percent of the population, according to a North Carolina State University study. Changing shapes
Why hasn't the apparel industry changed with women?
"It's a huge thing to change," said Cynthia Istook, professor at the university and lead researcher on the study that revealed 80 percent of women are shaped like straight rectangles, hippy pears or top-heavy inverted triangles.
"The industry doesn't want to create so many different sizing systems," she said. "They can hardly handle the idea of misses or junior, and we may have four or five systems to replace them."
Meanwhile, SizeUSA, a national survey completed in 2003, found that American women's figures have shifted from an hourglass shape to rectangular or pear-shaped. Industry guidelines dictate that a size 8 means a 35-inch bust, a 27-inch waist and 37.5-inch hips; SizeUSA found that American women with a 34- to 35-inch bust actually have a 29-inch waist and 38.5-inch hips.
Moving from six sizes to as many as 50 to accommodate height and shape is cost-prohibitive, say industry insiders.
Still, Istook and others familiar with the findings of SizeUSA are championing a sizing system based on the majority rather than the minority.
The result could make life easier for shoppers like Valerie McClinton, a plus-sized petite.
"I'm only 5 feet 4 inches," said McClinton, of southwest Atlanta. "I have to make sure I get petite sizes, but petite doesn't mean small, it means short."
McClinton has found up-to-date fashions at plus-size retailers such as Ashley Stewart and Lane Bryant, but often the clothes that fit her shape are too long.
Her curvy 5-foot-9-inch daughter, Nicole, wears a size 16 to 18, depending on the store. A search for the perfect jeans led the 18-year-old to Old Navy, which introduced sizes 16 to 26 in select stores in July. The full line is available online, a common practice for retailers that have ventured into the realm of extended sizes.
J.C. Penney is also branching out, setting a new standard by using SizeUSA data to create a line of pants in its Worthington Collection. The pants --- in tall, average and petite lengths --- come in three different cuts to fit the three most common body shapes: pear, apple and rectangle.
Sizes range from a 2 to 24, and the styles are named Marilyn, Katherine and Audrey in honor of Hollywood icons. The Marilyn cut rests below the waist, while the Audrey cut falls at the natural waist. Both are appropriate for apple and pear shapes. The Katherine cut sits slightly above the waist and is most appropriate for a rectangular body shape. How sizes progress
Regardless of the cut, all garments begin with a pattern and a "fit model." A fit model's size depends on the brand, ranging from size 2 to size 8. Once a sample is made based on her measurements, it is graded up to larger sizes.
But "You can't grade a size 2 up to a size 18," said Brad Orloff, vice president of marketing for the Avenue, a chain for women size 14 to 32. With each enlargement, the fit becomes more distorted, he said.
Designers from the Avenue study the latest international fashions, then create versions for a size 18 or size 22 fit model. Orloff said more retailers are acknowledging that the plus-size market is profitable.
According to data from NPD, misses was the only size category in which sales didn't grow in the period from February 2005 to February 2006. Sales of plus-size clothing grew by 6.7 percent; petite by 8.3 percent. Startup solutions
But retailers' sluggish approach to change has left plenty of room for start-ups willing to find solutions. Julie Lee created Julianna Rae, a line of intimate apparel and loungewear for five body shapes, from Snowdrop (hippy) to Rose (round).
Myshape.com, a California-based online retailer, provides clothing suggestions for women based on their measurements. In August, it will link members to designers suited to their body types, effectively creating a personalized online boutique.
In the 16 years since she launched her catalog for tall women, Kordalski says growth has continued at a steady pace.
At 6-foot-2, Stela Flanagan, 31, of Poncey Highland is the exact customer Kordalski hopes to serve. Flanagan said she has some success online at Gap and J Crew. When she does go to stores, her experience isn't much different than what Kordalski faced many years ago.
"Every now and then, I go to Filene's," Flanagan said, "and I'll look at the rack to see how [long] things are hanging."
And , once in a while, she said, she leaves with something that fits.
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution