Abstract
This study is to provide basic information on clothing fitness necessary to develop apparel products for Korean companies that want to enter or have already made inroads into the Chinese market. In an effort to serve this purpose, a standard upper torso body model for Chinese women was established by applying the Rohrer Index and Size Designation of Clothes - Women of GB/T 1335.2-1997 to Chinese women in their 20s to determine body types and its characteristics. First, according to the result of applying the Rohrer Index to categorize body types, Type 1 showed the longest vertical body length and a short horizontal length with the lowest degree of flatness. Type 2 was a standard body type with a height of 158.73cm, weight of 53.02kg and the Rohrer Index of 1.32. Type 3 had a thick and flat body shape that had the highest degree of flatness and the shortest vertical length in its upper torso among all three types of body. Second, F-test was conducted on 4 distinctive body types obtained from comparing obesity scores to verify differences in body shapes for different degree of obesity. The test result indicated significant differences in 3 of the 4 body types and showed different structural components for different degree of obesity. Third, the result of comparing correlational distributions of body types and height range, and body types and degree of obesity for all and specified age groups revealed that about 33.30% of the body types appeared in Type2-A followed by 20.18% in Type1-A, 18.40% in Type2-Y and 7.91% in Type1-Y respectively. Body types and degree of obesity for two different age groups were most frequent in Type2-A. For the group of young women in their early 20s appeared the most in Type2-A, Type1-A, Type2-Y and Type 1-Y respectively and young women in late 20s were frequent in the order of Type2-A, Type2-Y, Type1-A and Type1-Y.
