Men's shirt pattern design part I : An experimental evaluation of shirt pattern drafting methods

This is part I of the two-parts series of papers dealing with the pattern drafting of men's dress shirts. Although there has been many published shirt pattern drafting methods, the appropriateness of such drafting methods for different body morphology has not been validated with systematic experiments. This paper reports on an experimental evaluation of the shirt pattern drafting methods from four tailoring experts. 19 men's dress shirts were made by an experienced tailor, each providing best fit to 19 Chinese male subjects having a wide variation of body shape, respectively. The shirt patterns were traced and their dimensions were compared with those calculated from the pattern drafting formulae of the four tailoring experts. It was found that the best-fit patterns deviated much from the patterns calculated from the existing shirt pattern drafting formulae. It is believed that the existing pattern drafting formulae may only be appropriate for a narrow group of people. For a large population, an improved pattern drafting method needs to be developed.Institute of Textiles and Clothin