What does the national body measuring campaign entail?
From May to December, the University College Ghent invites 5,000 Belgians to register online and allow us to scan their body measurements with our 3D body scanner. We will scan people in Ghent, Kortrijk, Brussels and Liège. The scanner projects white light on to the person and takes a picture. This harmless procedure takes only two seconds, which prevents interference from movement. In 2013, we will process the figures to draw up new body measurement indexes for Belgium. The current indexes date from 1990.

Why is it necessary to create new indexes?
Research shows that people have become taller and heavier on average. The previous indexes were drawn up by manual methods, which meant they could take only around 25 measurements, such as around the chest and the waist. With the 3D scanner, we take approximately 200 measurements and get an idea of the most common body types.

And this is used by the fashion industry?
There are around 10 typical body types, designated with terms such as “apple” and “pear” or “rectangle” and “triangle”. Today, the fashion industry bases almost all its clothing on the so-called “hour-glass model”, defined by a thin waist, but research demonstrates that only 7% of Belgian women conform to this standard. We want to map the body forms according to age and gender so the clothing companies can better tune their products to their customers.

Can other sectors profit from these indexes?
They are useful to all manufacturers of consumer goods. The automotive industry, for example, can use the results to determine the best distance from the car seat to the pedals. Manufacturers of orthopaedic appliances such as mattresses are helped by information on people’s average length and weight, but also by statistics on the curve of the back.

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