India to soon have own size system for clothes and shoes

India will soon have its own standard size and measurements for apparel and shoes, the government has said. Union Minister of Textiles Piyush Goyal on Tuesday said that the standardisation process has been undergoing for the last few years, and that it will be implemented anytime soon.

“A worry for us was that India does not have its own size, and we do not have standards of our own, to fit Indian body shapes, and Indian manufacturing standards and make. To bridge that gap, a study was started by the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). They worked at it for a few years, and carried out research during Covid as well,” Goyal said.

Goyal said that the NIFT has given a presentation recently. “The work that has gone is commendable – NIFT went to all states; finishing touches remain now; the standards will be implemented soon,” he said. He added that work on shoe sizes is going on, too.

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The apparel industry in India relies on the British size system, with sizes of “small, “medium, and “large”, or of "Euro 6", "Euro 7" and "Euro 8". Ministry officials contend that Indian sizes are smaller than the standard UK or US system, since the Indian waist sizes are smaller than those of our Western counterparts.

The anthropometric research study, which was started by NIFT in 2018 to develop an India Size Chart for ready-to-wear garments, involved body measurements through a 3D body scanner among 25,000 people in Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Shillong.

To a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour, NIFT had said that findings of the study will have wider ramifications.

“The proposed study aims at not only standardising garment size charts for the Indian apparel sector but the findings of the study will have ramifications across various sectors such as automotive, aerospace, fitness & sport, art, computer gaming etc. where the insights from this data can produce ergonomically designed products which are well suited for the Indian population,” NIFT had said to the committee.

Additionally, the Bureau of Indian Standards has been working on a similar system for shoes, and a study among 1 lakh individuals has been conducted with the help of the Chennai-based Central Leather Research Institute (CLRE), officials said. A section committee of the BIS has been working out a standard size system for shoes.