The structure of body measurements for the determination of garment system for young Croatian men.

The determination and promotion of garment size systems require a knowledge of the proportions of the human body i.e. of anthropometric measures of a certain population. In order to create and promote a garment size system it is necessary to establish a correct relationship between the body parts or body measures. Possible interregional body differences are often neglected in the process, although they can be considerable even in cases of sex- and age- limited populations. This has been confirmed by an investigation of body measures for determining garment sizes carried out on a randomly selected sample of 4,268 healthy and normally developed men aged 18-22. The investigation was performed in 1993 on five locations each one representing a definite region of the Republic of Croatia: Jastrebarsko (central), Koprivnica (northwest), Pula (southwest), Sinj (south) and Pozega (northeast). The survey instruments were 50 body measures chosen according to ISO standards for garment sizes. Interregional differences were considerable in all body measures. The role of those measures and their contribution to the differences was confirmed by discriminative analysis with regions as a priori defined samples. Besides the differences in body size, significant differences in body build were established, mostly in the northeast region of Croatia and partly also in the northwest region. It is the difference in body build (besides the high number of necessary measurements) that makes the determination of garment size systems so complex. In order to establish an appropriate and purposeful garment size standard it is necessary to collect more information and also introduce the entity of target-population into previously determined categories in terms of chest circumference and body height.