MEASURING WOMEN

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 44, 12 November 1952, Page 3

MEASURING WOMEN

i FINDING POPULAR .8IZB8 ■ Brooke Wilson is an anthropome- , tris't which, so he revealed in a' B.B. G. programme, is a s-tudent of form, and in his case the feminine form. Wilson's studying is undertaken for a big fashion store in the West End of London and in the last four years he has taken the measurements of more than seven thousand la-dies of every size and in every kind of occupation. His object is to find out the most popular sizes in clothes and also the average size of British women. , He has discovered that for a long time clothing manufacturers have been catering for an average woman of five feet six inches, whereas the average height, of British women is really five feet four inches, forty per cent of the ladies being five feet thxee inches and #under. It is not always easy to get women's measurements and sometimes he has to use a certain amount of low cunning to achieve his ends. A bus conductoress was suspicious when he produced his tape measure but when he said "You must be about forty-four inches round the hips?" she denied it indignantly and immediately allowed herself to be measured, proving her fiips to be forty, as Mr Wilson had already gpessed. As a result of his painstaking studies his employers, with stocks based on his statistics, can fit any women from five feet two inches and upwards and only recently they fitted perfectly, straight off fthe |peg, a lady of six feet four inches.