Vital statistics are next euro target

Miss England's vital statistics have just grown from a winning 34-26-33 to a rather less than ideal figure for the catwalk of 86-66-84.

But Michelle Walker will be relieved to know that the change is nothing to do with over-indulgence on her part. She is just the victim of another scheme by European bureaucrats who want women sizes translated from inches to centimetres.

Kate Winslet, for example, is at present a proud 38-29-39 - but she will balloon to 97-74-99 if Brussels gets its way.

It is part of a European Commission plan for a standard sizing system for clothes. The changes will see familiar dress sizes for women such as 10 or 12 replaced with centimetre measurements - which the EU hopes will make buying clothes less of a lottery.

At present there are four main different systems for measuring dress sizes in Europe, which creates confusion for consumers and causes enormous problems for retailers trying to sell the same line of clothing to different countries.

Currently, the average dress size for women in the UK is a size 14, a size 42 in France, a size 46 in Italy and a size 40 in Germany. Under the new system, these would be replaced with just one measurement - 88cm.

Before a standardised system can be introduced, it will be necessary for member states to conduct national size surveys in order to establish exactly what the new measurements should be. The UK is currently leading the rest of the Europe in this area, having just completed the first of these surveys. A total of 11,000 men and women took part in the study and the results are expected by the end of the year.

Involving clothing stores John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and Oasis, the survey used the latest technology to scan the shapes of participants and recorded up to 200,000 data points on their bodies to produce 3D models of them. Professor Philip Treleaven from the University of London is the director of Size UK, the national sizing survey. He said: "The main reason for conducting this survey is that there hasn't been one like it since 1952, and obviously people's shapes have changed significantly since then.

"The European Commission saw what we had done and realised that similar surveys were needed elsewhere in order for standardised dress sizes to be feasible.

"France and Germany will be launching their own studies later this year, and others are following suit."

Although the results of the survey have yet to be collated, the evidence so far seems to suggest that Britons are getting fatter.

Professor Treleaven said: "The message that has come out of the survey so far is that people are getting bigger. Not in one particular area - just bigger all over."

However, it will be several years before inches are dumped in favour of centimetres in British clothing stores.

Frank Moore, head of merchandising at John Lewis and a member of the committee for textiles and apparel at the European Commission, said: "There's no point in simply introducing a new system into stores without educating consumers first, because they just won't buy the clothes.

"There needs to be a meeting of retailers to decide how this should be done properly, but it will probably take the form of dual sizing to begin with, to give people a chance to get used to the new system."

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