Mister D: Is this like “one size fits all?”
A fitting approach to fashion
Saturday, April 17, 2004
By CHERYL HALL
The Dallas Morning News
Cricket Lee’s mission is as simple as it is difficult. She wants to revolutionize the way clothes fit baby boomer women who aren’t built like Catherine Zeta-Jones � or Aunt Bea.
“We don’t look like our daughters or our mothers,” says the 51-year-old creator of a patent-pending technology for fitting clothes. “It’s a fact: A size 10 45-year-old is not the same shape as a size 10 25-year-old.”
Nor is a size 10 in one brand the same as the next, she notes.
Ms. Lee, who lives in Dallas and Santa Fe, N.M., has spent more than $1 million developing a sizing system that clothing makers can use to adapt their creations to real-life bodies. For consumers, it means greater confidence that all size 10s will be created equal.
“The apparel industry uses fit as a selling point for individual brands, and the customer is totally frustrated by it,” says Ms. Lee, founder and chief executive of mBrioWear LP in Dallas. She’s also a veteran of the fashion world and a size 18 middle-age shopper. “We don’t have time to try on clothes, and we don’t want to alter them. Women will embrace standardized sizing � just ask us.”
Her first indication of this consumer angst came in 1987, when she directed Dallas-based Jerell Inc.’s marketing launch of Multiples. The mix-and-match knitwear captured nearly $90 million in sales its first year because the one-size garments were comfortable, and their shapeless form fit nearly anyone.
She believes her trademarked sizing system, FitLogic, can reduce the price slashing needed to move immovable merchandise.
“They mark it down, and we go on a buying frenzy. They aren’t making any money, and we don’t look good,” she says. “If they’ll segment their fit further, they have an opportunity to go from fitting 40 percent of the market to double that.”
Currently, most manufacturers start with a size 8 and increase or decrease a garment concentrically.
“By the time you get to size 18, you get a big butt and orangutan arms,” says Ms. Lee, holding out sleeves that flow past her knuckles. “I’ve already had this cut off four inches. They think our necks and our arms grow exponentially with our rears and our stomachs,” she says. “It doesn’t work that way.”
Instead, Ms. Lee starts with a size 12, the average for women 35 to 55. She fits again at sizes 8 and 16, and then at 20 for plus sizes. The garments are morphed using data from an industry-funded study that scanned more than 6,300 women.
She’s analyzed the SizeUSA study and discovered something most of us know through observation or personal trauma: About half of middle-aged women have big bottoms or full bosoms, but not necessarily both. And just because a woman has a belly doesn’t mean that she has saddlebags.
Breaking it down
Her system breaks down body shapes into full tops, average tops, curvy bottoms and straight bottoms.
“I’m an 18, average-breasted straight butt,” she says. “Jennifer Lopez would be an average-busted curvy bottom. Bette Midler would be a full curvy. Cameron Diaz would be an average straight. An 8 average on the top may be a 12 curvy on the bottom.”
A similar demonstration last year for Harvey Sanders, then chief executive of Nautica Enterprises Inc., landed her a six-month development partnership with his company, which has since been purchased by VF Corp.
Mr. Sanders, who was vacationing in Europe and unreachable last week, is quoted in Ms. Lee’s promotional materials as saying he envisions “Cricket on Oprah, getting the audience excited about the product, guessing their particular fit” and then racing to the nearest store to buy the clothes.
She’s marshaled support from leading industry experts, including Marshal Cohen of NPD Group in New York, who says women are begging for this. “Cricket has standardized and modeled the fit so that you know you’re this body type or that body type.”
Wooing supporters
But persuading clothing producers to make the change has proved difficult, she says. “It’s a hard sell to get manufacturers to hold hands and be collective for the consumer’s sake,” she says.
Those who know her say that if anyone can pull off this daunting task, it’s Ms. Lee.
“Cricket has a great idea, the timing is right, and she has a great personality to make it happen,” says David Wolfe, creative director of the Donegar Group in New York.
“She’s like Joan Crawford. Being thick-skinned and a nag are wonderful qualities for long-shot success. I’m just amazed it’s taking this long to catch on.”
So far, she’s enlisted two dozen “Cricket believers” willing to trade professional services or invest money for tiny slivers of the company.
“Chances of her succeeding are probably more against her than for her, but boy, I tell you, it’s an ingenious idea,” says Dallas financial services planner Chris Fay, who’s invested $25,000 to help his friend. “Cricket is so intoxicating when she talks about her idea, you walk away thinking, ‘This has to work.’ ”
As Ms. Lee puts it: “Difficult, frustrating and almost impossible to sell to the industry? You bet. But I will get into the market. Then watch what happens.”
First fashions
Alice Cricket Hayes was born the second of four children in Decatur, Ala., and given that middle name by her father after a comic strip character. The family moved to Texas when she was nearly 2.
As a 14-year-old, she created her first product � velvet-lined lunch-pail purses she sold to 30 or so of her mother’s friends in Marshall, Texas, for $25 apiece.
Three years later, she created her own line at a local shop. Customers picked out dresses from her design book. She custom-fitted the garments and sold them for $75 to $150.
Ms. Lee designed a trendy disco on Greenville Avenue in 1973 and produced a line of pet jewelry sold at Saks Fifth Avenue in the late 1990s.
In between, she married and divorced three times, ran an advertising agency in Odessa, developed couture fur-and-leather sportswear sold at Neiman Marcus and created a line of skin care products financially backed by Caroline Hunt.
And those are just the highlights.
“I’m very project-oriented,” she says. “I get it done and move on to the next thing.”
In late 2002, Ms. Lee was between projects when she was struck with heavenly inspiration: “God told me that baby boomer women size 10 to size 18 were the most frustrated persons on Earth when it comes to apparel. God told me to make them clothes that fit.”
OK, so it’s not loading animals on an ark, but Ms. Lee believes her mission is every bit as divine.
So does her partner, Shannon Rider, who works full time with Ms. Lee.
“Gravity, divorce and childbirth are not our friends,” says the 51-year-old, who has a master’s degree in costume design. “Every time I describe what we’ve done to anyone our age, the response is always the same: ‘When will it be ready, and where can I buy it?’ ”
New models
Ms. Lee had to hunt for unfit “fit models” � living mannequins used to give designers inspiration as they see how their clothes drape, fit and flow.
“When designers see our real-life size 12 fit models, they say, ‘I’m not designing for a woman with a poochy stomach.’ But that’s the way we look,” she says.
To push FitLogic along, Ms. Lee has designed CricketLee Apparel that features forgiving styles and stretchy fabrics. She has a tentative agreement to sell the career-oriented line on a shopping network and is meeting with another soon. Two divisions within the giant Kellwood Co. are also considering it.
Ms. Lee spent last week meeting with Haggar Clothing Co. about production and distribution support of CricketLee. There’s nothing signed yet, but both sides are optimistic.
“We view this as an opportunity to grow our business,” says Ed Vierling, president and chief operating officer of the Haggar womenswear division, who’s worked with Ms. Lee on projects for nearly two decades.
“She’s creative. She’s innovative. She forces you to look at things differently from the everyday way you run your business,” says Mr. Vierling. “She’s hit on a big idea that will have a major impact on the retail industry for many years.”
