Measuring up

 by Lana Burke
 published on Wednesday, April 9, 2008

STATE PRESS MAGAZINE

Jennifer Peña, an interdisciplinary studies junior, has an enviable hourglass figure. But that doesn't mean finding well-fitting clothing is any easier for her.

"I have a hard time finding pants that fit right," Peña says. "My butt is big, and my waist is little."

While it seems hard to pity someone with such a predicament as Peña's, it's true that finding the right clothing for one's body shape can be difficult. Increasing the problem is the lack of standards for clothing sizes among brands. A size eight in one store may translate to a size five in another.

Finding the right clothes becomes even more difficult when shopping online, where the benefit of trying things on isn't available.

Zafu.com is trying to fix this dilemma.

"We're like Match.com," says Robert Holloway, co-founder of Zafu.com. "You tell us about yourself and we give you a personalized and unique match, except it's in clothing."

By answering questions about their body shape, users can get recommendations from Zafu.com on specific styles of jeans from various brands accompanied with pictures, prices and links to merchants.

Holloway says the site was created after he and his colleagues saw the struggle women had with finding well fitting clothing.

"Women have many different shapes," says Holloway, "and it's very hard to determine what clothing was made for your shape. So we said, 'Maybe we can solve that,' and we did. "

Zafu.com currently recommends fits in jeans, pants, plus-size jeans and bras, and according to Holloway has had more than 3 million users since its debut in 2006.

Another site hoping to enter the battle arena of finding well-fitting clothes is sizewand.com

A similar idea to Zafu.com, sizewand.com hopes to integrate the tool SizeWand directly into online clothing retailer's sites.

The SizeWand will inform users of their size in all items they look at on participating sites as they browse.

SizeWand collects users' measurements by having them enter in their favorite article of clothing's measurements to determine their size.

SizeWand co-founder Melissa Adelman says in an e-mail the site will continue to gather information for the tool for the next couple of months before it is up and running.

To entice people to submit clothing data before the tool is functioning, SizeWand is offering monthly prizes such as iPods to those who enter 10 items or more. And, considering the cost of iPods these days, there isn't any better reason to break open the closet and pull out a tape measure.

Reach the reporter at: lana.burke@asu.edu.