Comment by chiph | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chiph | Hacker News Reader

Twenty or so years ago, Levis had a program called Personal Pair (they paired with a firm/product called Intellifit) where you would step into a millimeter wave 3D scanner and get your precise measurements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1IceHjADbQ

Which you could use to get a custom pair of jeans made just for you. This failed partly because the target market turned out to be middle-aged adults (that buy fewer pairs), and not 18-25 year olds like they were hoping. Partly over privacy concerns. Partly the ability of the factory to make jeans to that tight of a tolerance. And partly because it was promoted like it was a novelty ("Consumers love it!"). Mentioned here previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2444319

But with this software - the tolerances are looser, so the clothing becomes more manufacturable. And the measurements can be anonymous - you don't feel like you're stepping into a TSA scanner for everyone to see.

I hope they are able to make relationships with multiple clothing brands so shopping from home will become less hit-or-miss. The benefit to the brands is going to be fewer returns for size issues.

There should still be privacy concerns, especially with their demo which sends a POST on "Generate". The author suggests the model is 85kB of weights, which could run perfectly well in browser.

> But with this software - the tolerances are looser, so the clothing becomes more manufacturable.

Does it? How do looser measurements help? I assume manufacturer would always take the upper bound of dimensions. Suppose model also predicted your dimensions are higher then they really are, so these two in combination give you an oversized piece of clothing.

Not just oversized - undersized also happens. Most cloth is still cut by hand using large electric saws and it's just not that accurate. (caution: loud music)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jvQHvz4GlPQ

Notice that the panels are marked out with chalk and if the operator doesn't stay square to the table, or isn't diligent in marking up the panels, they won't be consistent with the brand's standard sizing.

I mean - ideally a set of panels of a piece of clothing would be cut by computerized laser so it's accurate to what the buyer needs. But that costs too much and takes too long.

(Cofounder here) I talked to really big fast fashion brands on that subject. Oftentimes they dont even have the garment cuts at hand. They sort of outsource big part of the designing process to the supplier (Bangladesh, China contractor). Fashion Technicians are handed samples and they iterate on them, but they can't reproduce the actual fabric dimensions that easily. The fast fashiuon brands are very hard to get them to experiment with such solutions for that matter - it would interfere with very fast and scrappy process thats in place

Thanks, this matches what we're seeing. Trying to establish relationship with some brands, this is the problem we hit. The clothing batches can be very different from each other - cut-by-hand problem. So they don't have sewing patterns to drape and even if they have the final clothes can be different. Plus they don't want to share the patterns/technical details.

So on business side despite the clear benefits, for now we have hard time finding interested brands. Probably part of it is that we're very technical, technology-focused guys. But we're evaluating both paths: whether the mass-made item will fit, and tailoring for a specific person. Will see how it works out.

On the scanner side. The software approach beyond the less friction also have a benefit of predicting the future shape: "pregnant me in 2 months" or "me with 3kg less". Or simpler: my measurements changed since last month and I don't need to rescan. That's harder with hardware.

So perhaps you need to present them with a more complete solution. Develop or source a faster laser cutter. And find a small factory in an area with skilled labor (central North Carolina still has people who can cut & sew). And develop a process in the factory to keep all the panels for one item of clothing together from cutting to sewing to shipping (maybe a bucket?).

It'll be a bespoke item at premium prices, no question. How big is the market for this? I don't know, but my feeling is that it's older women.

Privacy is close to my heart too. It's just a balance between privacy as a need vs operation speed and intellectual property. To be decided.

Inference can be totally done client-side. Later measurement tuning would be much harder.

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