Avatars: The Way of Fit | Human Solutions, CosMODA | PI Apparel

Good afternoon, everyone. Nice to see you again. I've seen some of you guys already at the booth. We're just right around the corner. I'm also happy to be here with 3 wonderful co-presenters that I know since a long time and shorter time, but pleasant time at all. And we're here to talk a little bit about a project that we all were part of. I think some funny stories and some interesting stories to talk about. So you know about this QR code, right? So I can skip this. Lauren, earlier this year we worked on a project together. So tell us a little bit more. You were the lead of this project. Tell us a little bit more about what we all did.

Well, What we all did is a very big concept, so I'm gonna start by sharing a little bit about myself. My specialty is personal image and brand, mostly in the corporate sector. And a number of years ago, I was responsible for creating a wardrobe program for one of my clients, which was a very large bank. With those two pieces of information, A longtime friend reached out, uh, in November of '22 asking this question: Is there anything we can do to get rid of tuxedos, tails, and terrible fashion sense in the orchestral world? It was just this open-ended, thought-provoking question that led to a conversation where we ultimately created a wardrobe system for for the orchestra that you're looking at here is the Richmond, Virginia Symphony Orchestra. It was a year-long project, and it was something that really had never been done in this way before. Musicians have special needs. They require special ability to move around, and they also work as athletes. And why is it clicking?

I accidentally press and cannot go back.

There you go. 'Cause otherwise I have to take the clicker away from you.

Can we go a slide back?

Let's go back one more. So the way this started was we commissioned designs and then I needed a team. And the first person I reached out to is Kat here on my left. Katherine and I were young image consultants together many years ago. In the image consulting world, aside from knowing about fabric and the garments themselves and about the body, the real key comes down to fit. Hence, our topic today is all about fit, because we can take an inexpensive garment, make it look great. We can take the most expensive garment and make it look better if we just know how to operate with fit. And by doing that, Kat became our resource person. And to Kat's left is Isabel, who became our head of alterations because We started with the theory that manual measurements would be the way to go. We have a master tailor out of Boston, and between him, Kat, and myself, we measured the 60+ musicians with 25 measurements, which we thought would be completely sufficient. And 6 months later, we brought the garments in from Senegal, and we had some sleeves that were 6 inches too long and others that were 4 inches too short, and nobody could quite figure out exactly why. And then we learned that they their interpretation of our measurements was not universal. And so everything in the end came down to fit. From the beginning of the project, Kat had been saying, "You need to meet André, you need to meet André, you need to meet André." I was like, "I know." We only have a very small budget. I can't afford André. And now I couldn't afford not to have André. And so enter André and Isabel and a shift in our own philosophy of how to create custom sample garments for an entire orchestra where we had 10 designs. Each musician was getting 4 custom garments as part of this phase 1 test, and we needed to redo our measurement system. So that's where this all began. And if we can go back to the first slide, I just want to point out that what was, what was interesting here is also that we were mixing media. Every garment needed to have stretch in every panel, but it needed to have the appropriate amount. It wasn't just that we were taking a straight-up fabrication and we were going to stitch a few pieces together. We weren't. They were complicated custom designs that were specific to the fact that every musician— and as you can see even on the bottom slide, the conductors, each of them have unique movements and unique requirements while they work as athletes and perspire and perform and need to be at peak performance all the time. This is why tuxes, tails from 150 years ago simply don't work for them. And we wanted to move this forward as formal wear that would be elegant, stylish, but it would be more treating the musician as athlete and really getting the performance advantage ahead. So that's where all this came from. You can see, We also took away the black and white. We moved into more subtle touches of color, something more customized. And in the next slide, we have some specifics around positioning and different arm movements. And all of these pieces were gender fluid. All musicians could choose from all 10 pieces. The mix and match of them was really unique. And that's where we started.

Yes, and then we— We had these hand measurements that were taken. And I think you can share your own experiences about the hand measurements and the alterations that needed to be done.

Yes, I think coming into the project after the tech pack had been done and the 10 pieces had been designed, I needed to know what the fabrication was. So as a sourcing specialist, I needed to find the right fabrication. But then getting everyone in the room all together at once to measure them was so challenging. And these are not— I'm a former plus-size model, so I was measured every day. And if anyone understands the fashion business, measurements are tight to the body and they're intimate to take. And that was one of the hard parts about when we working with these musicians was the the modesty factor, the intimacy factor. And I knew from the get-go because I had met Andre and I said, we gotta do scanning, body scanning, but it conjures up this TSA kind of, you know, verboten kind of scenario. And I said, no, it's gonna be absolutely pleasurable for the person. You're not gonna be having to get up in their, waist and under their leg and get in the inseam. And it's embarrassing sometimes for somebody who's getting measured for the first time to have to go through that. And then you have their clothes on, and how do you get a good accurate measurement when they have a belt on, when they have big baggy sweat clothes on when you're measuring them? The avatar was the way to go, and I knew it. I knew it. I knew it in my heart, and I just had that in the back of my head all along. And then when the garments came back, as Lauren was the sleeves were all different and the shoulders were off. I said, can we do avatars now? We can't afford not to. And I, you know, so I had to research some companies and new companies are out and I kept coming back to Human Solutions because I saw so many presentations and when the pandemic was happening, there was an online seminar with Angie O'Reilly and all these people that I had known in the fit world and I I was so convinced 'cause I was looking for it for my own business with the plus-size women in department stores and retail. And just having to measure plus-size women, I had to have 120-inch measuring tape because if you're straining to get a 58 bust, you understand the limitations of the tape measure. You know, it's insulting to the customer to— and avatars are just a much, much cleaner, much better way to go. And then you have the body. You have that 3D body that you can measure 3 o'clock in the morning. You can measure it any time of day. You can check it. And I said to— because we had tailors done in Senegal— before they put the scissor to the fabric, we need to check the avatar and the measurements with them so that it's accurate. And once we did that and we had about 25 or 30 garments that came back, it was 90% improved, 90%. So it was such a, you know, I said to Lauren, you get very little job satisfaction in the corporate world, but when you're doing these independent projects, and I brought in, you know, this nanotechnology that was antimicrobial, I brought in Andre with Human Solutions, solutions, it was such job satisfaction when I knew in my heart that these avatars were going to be the way of the future and the way of fit.

The funny fact is when Kat talks about avatars, she always means 3D body scans. That's why also we choose this title. Avatars sounds better than 3D body scans. Isabella, I met you there. Really great conversations we had. So, share us a little bit about your, you know, thought about the hand measurements because I have seen you remeasuring when I got there the first time. I seen you remeasuring everyone. So, and then, you know, yeah, tell us a little bit more about this.

Of course.

But first question is, by a raise of hand, how many of you have tailors or work with tailors? Any? See, 1, 2. All right, and then the second question, how many of you have gotten custom garments made for you? All right, okay, good. So as a tailor, I'm also a master tailor. I've worked with companies such as Balmain, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue. I have my own clients as well. But with tailoring, right, we're still human. It's still a human hand. So I may measure right at the wrist at one point. The next tailor may measure maybe a little bit higher. So there's always going to be a discrepancy, and it's never going to be perfect. Perfect. Getting custom garments, working with the tailor, there's a lot of time spent. You're going to have to get measured. You're going to get a sample done. You're going to choose a fabric. It's a long process. And one of the issues, too, that we had with the project was just the amount of alterations. And right, clothing, if— with human solutions, thank you. And towards the end, I'll share why it's the missing piece. Especially in sustainability. It really cuts out the time. The fact that we actually had to try on the garments, get it remade, come back, remeasure the suits, wear all the garment tops, the suits, it takes a lot of time. But after working with Human Solutions, body scan, garments come in, boom. Some of them were so perfect, all I had to do was maybe a simple hem. But it just cut the time. I mean, to me, I'm going to say 75 to 80%, but it's just the ease. So just imagine your tailor, your custom garments, they're done super fast instead of 1 week, 2 week, 3 week, 4 week. Now the garment's finally done.

Little educational, little part of this. You know, you're all familiar with inches, I would assume, right? So what do you think, how many countries, because I think that was also one possible constraint is you measure in inches, you have to translate into metric system because what do you think, how many countries in the world use inches? 1? 3. But it's Libra and Myanmar in the US. Not even Great Britain. Is using inches or this measurement type anymore. That was just educational part. I think we can go to the drinks. Now, the body scanner is always the one thing. So yes, we sell body scanners. We do size surveys. But I thought about this more as a size survey. So we take measurements of 25 people, 30 people at the orchestra. We did 18,000 people here in the US. Little setup again, nothing— it has to be fast. I got a call, can you do it? Say, yep, I can come by. So put the scanner, one of the scanners in a truck, drove down there, set everything up under hard conditions.

Yeah, really painful.

Really next to a barbecue.

There was a barbecue place that smoked the meat. And I said, no. Every time I went out to the car, I smelled this and then went out to say lunchtime, say I want to have pulled pork. Oh, we just start serving this on Thursday. I said, 2 more days, really? And then it was— but the long story is it wasn't even good. But I learned this the hard way on Thursday.

Smelled good, though.

It smelled good, yeah. So we set everything up. It was a little place. It was busy. Musicians came in every— Every half an hour?

Yep.

Kind of, yep. And then Taylor sitting there. Again, it was a great, great place. So when we did this scan, we supplied these scans then to Lauren together with our software. I think you can tell us a little bit more how this helped to understand really what your customers, in this case, the musicians, what they are.

So in our situation, knowing each musician intimately, having already measured them, but also having had all the interaction and a deeper understanding that most of them have never done anything more than shorten a cuff and a hem. They have no awareness or understanding of what goes into creating a custom garment, nor do they need to. But from our perspective, in order to get it right, being able to access what you see here and being able to sit— thanks to Matt, thank you— hours and hours of my education, because this is way out of my wheelhouse, but learning how to manipulate the software and having the ability to say, "Wait a minute, this is the percussionist, and he needs his arms to go this way," or the cellist or the bassist or the flautist, as you saw in the picture. So I could move the measurement to create more ease. I could legitimately put the waist where it needed to be based on what I knew about that person. How they want their clothes to fit, where it needs to fit, how would it make it easier for them to be comfortable and do what they need to do in the garment. This is not something that I could have done with an off-the-rack garment ever. And a lot of times when I operate on clothes that come off the rack, I have to move a waist. I have to take it apart and literally reset an entire area of a garment. But here I could determine it right up front, and when it came back from the tailor, it was right the first time. A lot of that was ease in a sleeve, you know, getting the proper measurement from the proper place, not necessarily where the scanner put it, but where I knew it needed to be.

Yeah, so talking about size charts, we had a couple of, you know, a couple of ideas. Isabella, you might want to, you know, Talk a little bit about standard size shirts or the— or CAD?

Well, I think what we probably should have done right from the beginning is not treat this project like 72 custom-made garments. And that would have made it a lot easier, because we could have simply gotten the measurements from 4 different characteristics. We could have gotten a very close body scan avatar that was exactly what that player was, you know, how they were going to fit into a size 2, 6, 8. Nobody was too different, maybe 6 or 7 people were outliers. See that red, that's like the condensed area that most everyone falls within there, and then the outliers are the ones that are like the 52 jacket or whatever, Most of the people in the symphony were pretty standard size, and I think if we had not gone custom, we could have just made the clothing for their size that they wore, and then there would have been a lot less alterations. But we were trying to do a custom garment 'cause we thought each player was going to, you know, be— we could tell them that it was made for them, especially for you, and had that whole cachet with it. But in hindsight, If Human Solutions gets the size charts the way they're supposed to get them done, these are going to be the best size charts in the business, and there are going to be so fewer returns and so fewer alterations that need to be done on the garment after the fact. So that's kind of in hindsight how we would have done it. We had, you know, we were going to do custom garments. We wanted to make them feel special, but we didn't really need to go that route, especially with how accurate the, um, that the amount of measurements that Human Solutions has in its database is mind-boggling. And it can be, um, so accurate without having to— we wouldn't even need to scan them.

No, we would have not needed the scanner, but, um, you know, it was nice. Yeah, we learned a lot. And I think moving forward, creating a custom side shirt for the musicians would have been an option. So we could, because it was still kind of made to measure, manufactured on demand. We could have gone a different way. We could have started with size charts, but we didn't need to necessarily. But that was an idea we just got while we talked every day. Isabella, we talked about this, and you found this a brilliant idea. We could have gone really from 0, and then not to go to 2, we could have gone 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, and so on. Because we don't need to manufacture all the clothing. Up front, it was, OK, here's a new size chart that fits a wide variety of people, more than just 2s, or 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on. And we could have— we have the data. We could have done this. We have our— I'm looking for the pointer, but I don't have a pointer on here. So I always press the wrong button. So we have a data portal that has all the data. Points from the surveys we did. So, we could have really come up with a nice size chart that fits, because the people and the musicians are just part of the population, they're not outsiders. So, we take all these scans of the North American population and we create these size charts, 0, 0.5, 5, sorry, 1, 2, 3, 1.5, and so on and so on and so on. So, kind of, you like this idea, right? Isabella?

Oh, I love this idea. It also helps with the headaches that I know a lot of us have whenever we go shopping and one brand is we're one size and then the next brand we're another size and then it's just a pain because you just, why is everything so different? But having the accuracy of the size charts and then I look at the half size charts, I think of shoes. Well, I'm just a little bit bigger here with the shoes here, so let's go a half size up. So it just really helps with the fit and it's just easier, easier time when we go get clothing for ourselves.

Yes. So yeah, we again, we talked about this. We could have, again, doing this moving forward, maybe we have an opportunity to talk to other orchestras, museums, whatever, all around the world. So we could develop this standard, the 0, 0.5, and so on, and then just using some other technology maybe to put those people into those sizes.

The groups that come to mind around special industries, anyone that's using a uniform —would benefit from having a tighter measurement scale only because it would limit the waste. It would really take care of most of the alterations that people actually need. Then you're really only servicing the outliers within that particular group as an extraordinary case. But from our perspective, I see a lot of airlines, for instance, doing designer uniform packages and this whole approach to the orchestral industry and other smaller niche organizations that people don't necessarily look at when you're designing for the masses, but the truth is these are small populations that are critical in terms of fit and using new technologies as far as their fabrications go as well. So being able to adjust for those things in the technology and in advance is huge.

One of the problems I had as the sourcing specialist was trying to find the right garment that would work with the jackets and the pants and make them elegant, but yet performance-based so that they weren't too casual looking, too bulky, and it had to have this streamlined elegance and the accent of the blue of the James River that we had to pull in. And, you know, it— we did do one sample based on the reference from the designer, and it didn't work. It was a heavy twill and a heavy satin, and we needed a much lighter kind of fabric. Fabric, and that in and of itself, we wasted a lot of time and a lot of fabric, and I was looking for the, I was searching in the wrong room. So I got the right fabric, then we went down to Senegal and found it, you know, a match down there that was even less expensive than it was in New York. So, you know, the budget came together on point. And I think with the body scan and the avatar, and, you know, we turned to the avatar after I had discovered the fabric that was right. But I think that would've also helped me not choose those wrong fabrics, 'cause you could've put them onto the body scan. You would've said, 'Cause look, you dressed the dress. Well, let's try that in our, bulky fabric, you know, and spin it around and see how the motion capture sits with it. And I mean, there are probably 6 or 7 different samples that get made. We didn't have time nor the budget for that. So, you know, we were able to at least find the right fabric before Human Solutions came in. But I think we wouldn't have even had to get one sample wrong. Yeah.

Now, and we can also, when we have these standard avatars, we could also use CLO Browzwear with the garment specs and do the visualization of the garments prior to seeing them the first time on the players and then being, oops, this might not turn out this— they turned out great. But again, having this little— Not the first time. I've seen that. I was there the second time, I think. But yeah, using these Browzwear, Clo, and other products to do these virtual try-ons before, I think that's also a good learning point and knowing, okay, this technology is available since a while. Next time, we visualize the designs before, and then we can do it on all the avatars from the smallest to the largest because, again, What looks good on, as you all know better than I, what looks good on a small person doesn't necessarily need to look good on a bigger person. So that could have been another— Pain point elimination. Yeah.

That would have been a selling point, an easier selling point for the musicians themselves. If we could have shown them how the garments would move, how we had taken all of their suggestions into consideration and built them into these garments. I mean, things like every button needed to be covered so it didn't touch an instrument. Things that don't necessarily go into the measurement aspect, but when it comes to a detail of a garment, where are we putting the extra stretch, where are we putting the less stretch, you can see it. They're not necessarily, you know, no one is as visual as an actual garment designer. So we can't expect that from the audiences, but we can do better the next time.

We can always learn. That's why we are, you know, here. Can you go a slide back? I think it humped over. It wasn't me. Just one slide back. Yeah. Let me ping this. I think it goes. It comes and goes. So one thing that we could also use instead of— and can you pause this maybe? One thing that we can also use for another project, and it goes away, would be the kind of body profiler that we own as a technology or any other size recommendation engine because we can just based on some easy inputs of these musicians like age, height, and weight, we can make a prediction to what size garments they would fit in. And I think we would have had a way better appreciation from the musicians because I could see they didn't want to get measured. And yes, they want to get scanned, but they were skeptical.

It wasn't exciting to put on the body-hugging gear that they needed to wear for the scans either. So using the BodyProfiler would definitely have been an advantage.

It would have. Yeah, it would have.

Yeah, these weren't fashion people at all. They didn't want any of the MO forced on them. And we even had to have changing rooms so that they could go and change into the athletic wear that we had to scan them in. And you have to take those things into consideration because of the modesty, I know, that's involved.

So the body profile would have been would have been an option, but you know, it was already, you know— I know.

We were at a different stage.

We had a different schedule. Yeah, I know, overall again, it was a great week for me. I really enjoyed this. Again, I learned a lot, you know, tailoring, and I've seen those— how many alterations they did on all these garments and how they tracked that they made the alterations on the real garment, on the right garment. It's still a miracle to me. So again, great project. I hope we can do something for other orchestras soon and use the technology that is out there, the 3D visualization, the standard size shots that we go maybe in between with the half sizes.

I think the one point to take away is that start from the beginning using this so that you don't have to backtrack, you don't have to say, see, I told you so. And I never did that though, but I knew.

Okay, so I own it, right? And to quote Maya Angelou, once you know better, it's your responsibility to do better.

'Cause now we're all sold on it, you know, and I was because I had known Andre for years, so You know, it was in the back of my mind that this would be the way to go. But now, now that everyone— it's proven. So before you even start to design the tech pack or anything, you know, I would say go to Human Solutions and, you know, start to incorporate this body scanning and all of the size charts and everything that is at the ready. It's already done for you. You don't have to go, you know, it's antiquated to think that those tape measures, and it's nice, but it's not as accurate. We want accuracy and sustainability so that we don't have to waste time, resources, and materials are wasted in the process. Start right from day one. That's where you were sold, I think, right?

Sustainability, right?

I definitely was sold on sustainability. It's definitely the— I told him it's the missing piece. I did have a womenswear brand back in the day when I was younger, but I would have saved so much money, one, on so many patterns, alterations to paper patterns, to fabrics, to fabric samples. There's so much waste. And then even now living in New York City, there's so much waste with obviously with the textiles. What do we do with all those pieces? That just cuts out so much with human solutions and the accuracy and a lot of money saved.

Yeah, it's worth it from the investment right from the get-go.

We will do it the next time. So I think we are right on the clock. I think there should be a— there you go— Q&A session. I see two different images. Do you have any questions? Yes, questions. There should be Q&A here. Questions? Someone send a question to this link. No, no questions. All thirsty. We can all go and have the drink reception. Great. Appreciate this. Thanks again. Thanks again, ladies.

Thank you. Thank you.

Great project. Pleasure.

Thank you.