Capitalizing on the widespread phenomenon of female swimsuit-shopping fear, Interactive Retail Technology is working with Macy's on a database that will eliminate the "trying-on" process by letting "virtual models" try the suits on instead.
"Shopping for a bathing suit is the one thing women consistently hate more than going to the dentist," says Joy Dargent, VP of Interactive Retail Technology. After a particularly painful shopping experience two years ago, "I asked myself, 'Why can't technology show this on a look-alike model so I don't have to go through this?'"
The result of that epiphany will debut on 24 April at Macy's in New York: bathing suit shoppers will be able to use IRT's Style Select terminal to input their body vitals - height, weight, chest, hips, and hair, eye, and skin color - and then extract a group of "look-alikes" from a database of 300 women. After discerning which image they most resemble, the customer can apply 53 bathing suits to the virtual model, and see what the suits will look like on a human being just like herself.
"In magazine ads you read that vertical stripes are slenderizing, but you forget that only works with stiff fabrics," says Dargent. "In the database there's a woman with a pear-shaped body, and you can see how the stripes bend around her hips and actually make her look bigger."
Of course, women often fudge in their favor when it comes to their measurements; to combat that (as well as to help women feel positive about the whole process), the tape measures will indicate size by color, not inches. Instead of having 38-inch thighs, users will be "red" or "yellow." "It makes them less self-conscious," says Dargent.
Ruth Nier, professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, says the program is a logical extension of a path retailers are already on. Levi Strauss, for example, has created the Personal Pair program, in which jeans are personalized to a woman's body by a computer program that uses four basic measurements: waist, hip, inseam, and rise. "My vision of future retail stores is that they will be very small" as they increasingly tailor their products to individuals, Nier says. With Style Select, she adds, women could more easily shop on the Web.
Dargent envisions that the seven to ten minutes it takes to use the program will help women eliminate hours of dressing-room time. Hopefully, it will increase sales as well: not only will it help eliminate unflattering suits, the program can help showcase flattering suits that women might not normally try on.
Privacy-conscious shoppers can rest assured that the process will be totally anonymous. As one focus group member related to Dargent, "I don't want anyone who knows my bra size to know where I live."
