Clothes come in special sizes for wide women, short women and young women, but none are specially tailored for older women whose body changes can include a forward head and neck angle, forward shoulder roll, back curvature, increase in girth and a decrease in height.

To help develop clothing that would give older women a better fit, two Cornell apparel designers have developed an objective way to analyze fit among older women and create appropriate alternatives in pattern shapes.

"Clothes are made for the upright stance of the 17- to 35- year-old and typically offer a poor fit for the different body proportions found among older women," said Susan Ashdown, Cornell assistant professor of textiles and apparel in the College of Human Ecology. The reason, she said, is women's clothing sizes -- including misses, women's, petite, junior and plus sizes -- are derived from a 1940s study of 10,000 women, of which only 2 percent were older than age 60. In fact, 92 percent of older women have problems finding clothes that fit well.

Ashdown, with Inez Kohn of Cortland, N.Y., who earned a master's degree in textiles and apparel in January, studied the postural changes among older women and how those changes could be incorporated into suit jackets and blazers.

Their research, which was presented to the International Textile and Apparel Association in Pasadena, Calif., in October, is one of the only studies that has looked at how the postural changes in older women affect the fit of clothing.

To analyze fit among older women, the Cornell researchers developed a nylon taffeta jacket with standardized slashes that pinpoint where the garment's stresses were when worn. Slashes were cut in vertical, horizontal and diagonal directions to the grain. Twelve women between the ages of 55 and 65 -- an age group often still in the workplace and needing business suits -- were videotaped while wearing the slashed garment and an identical unslashed garment. Subjects answered a questionnaire about fit and size and an expert panel analyzed the fit of the unslashed jackets on the women. The video of the slashed garments was analyzed by computer. "The computer can objectively pick up very subtle stresses and the magnitude of curvatures," said Kohn, a former medical researcher with an interest in apparel who has also had her own weaving studio for several years.

"Unlike most apparel designers who tend to focus on body dimensions, such as circumference and length, we examined body stance, angles and proportions and relationships, such as how the shoulders and bust relate to one another," added Ashdown, who teaches courses on anthropometrics (measurements of the human body) and apparel.

Ashdown and Kohn used video image analysis computer programs -- typically used in X-ray crystallography and by the auto industry to detect defects -- to detect postural changes in the back and shoulder curvature of older women. They also used a cutting diamond tool from sign-making equipment to cut the 50,000 to 100,000 standardized slashes into the nylon fabric.

The researchers are working with a women's apparel manufacturing company, Koret of California, which will provide a set of jackets for a large-scale test to see if the Cornell modifications successfully capture the body shape of this older population. Fit tests will be done at the University of Washington, the University of California at Davis, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and at Cornell. The research was supported at Cornell by a $12,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and an $800 grant from Cornell's College of Human Ecology.