Clothing retailers find that customers respond when the figures in the windows look more like their own.
By wire services
Published October 14, 2004
Get real.
That's what fashion retailers are hearing from some customers when it comes to how they sell their clothes. Meaning that those mannequins with pipe-cleaner-thin waists, no chests, even no ripped abs, the ones so perfectly displaying a dress or shirt, aren't always the thing that gets people into the stores to spend their money.
More shoppers want to see themselves on display. And pipe-cleaner-thin waists aren't them.
So mannequins, which for the female form typically range from sizes 2 to 6, are getting bigger. And some of those new forms are making their way into stores now, as retailers get ready for the holiday shopping season.
"The ideal of the perfect body keeps changing," said George Martin, creative director of mannequin-maker Patina-V in City of Industry, Calif.
"(Mannequin) sizes are getting fuller in the mass market."
The average U.S. man is about 5 feet 10 inches tall, not much taller than in 1850, when the average height was 5 feet 9.
But SizeUSA, a national study sponsored by clothing and textile companies, the military and several universities, suggests that though middle Americans haven't gotten much taller, they are growing larger.
For years, the average woman was considered to be size 8, but SizeUSA showed that even women who were at the low end of the size scale looked more like a size 14, the size at which "plus size" clothing generally is considered to begin.
Most men are larger than 40 regular, long considered the average male clothing size, according to SizeUSA.
The median weight for men and women taking part in the study was 4 pounds heavier than those measured in a 1994 study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Clothing retailers have dealt with Americans' changing bodies in several ways, from selling relaxed-fit jeans to making larger sizes more stylish. The sales those efforts have generated are pushing clothing for larger people out to the front of the stores, where retailers want more enticing displays, said George Donnelly, owner of Global Hanger and Display in Patchogue, N.Y.
Along with those efforts has come a not-so-small change in mannequin designs, industry members say, and more frequent orders for larger sizes.
"There is certainly more of a variety out there," said Evan Goldstein, operations manager for Goldsmith Inc., a mannequin maker in Long Island City, N.Y.
Patina-V's products range up to size 20 with the addition of a form this year. Global Hanger and Display is working on a size 14 torso for a clothing store.
Some mannequins for both sexes have gotten taller. Goldsmith makes women as tall as 6 feet 2 and men 6 feet 4. Also, male forms now have pecs and ripped abdomens, Martin said.
Of retailers in general, Donnelly said, "Now they find there is more success marketing to the masses."
Matthew Campos, visuals manager at Neiman Marcus in Tampa's International Plaza, said he has seen bigger mannequins showing up in visual display magazines. But, he said, visual displays are going in several directions these days and the trend is not something every store will want to incorporate, including the high-end Neiman's.
"We're staying with the same mannequins," he said. "As a company, I don't think we will go in that direction."
The desire to be more realistic in fashion marketing isn't limited to inanimate objects. Stein Mart, an off-price chain with headquarters in Jacksonville, is using a TV ad campaign with testimonials from regular women who shop at its stores.
"Our ad agency (Fry Hammond Barr of Orlando) worked up the idea that the best people to tell the story are the people who really know the story," Stein Mart spokeswoman Susan Datz Edelman said.
Stein Mart shoppers were recruited from several markets, and they were asked for the ads just to say why they like shopping at the store.
For the ads, which were shot in a studio, the women were worked on by stylists, but "these women are not all Hollywood model-looking people," Datz Edelman said. "They are real people you see at the grocery store . . . at Starbucks going for coffee. People relate to that as much or more than folks that look unattainable.
"(The ads) came out great. People really responded to the "real people' element."
Times staff writer Sharon Fink contributed to this report, which used information from Times wires.
