Fashion victims find unlikely ally in science

It's a question that has long preyed on the minds of women in the changing rooms of clothes shops.

Until now, they have had to seek the answer from others, including men, who might not always be relied upon to tell the truth. But at last, technology is poised to provide much-needed clarity on a vexed issue. Shoppers may soon have the benefit of scientific opinion on whether their bums look big in this.

Ironically, the breakthrough has come thanks to military research. The company concerned, QinetiQ, was working on target identification and range-finding for the British Ministry of Defence when it discovered that its imaging techniques could have applications in fashion, an area where the search for co-ordinates is also vital.

Deployed in the theatre of operations that is the changing room, QinetiQ's "body-mapping" system would lock onto its target, capturing visual data from more than 1,000 individual points, before delivering a verdict on whether a given fashion item is a hit, a miss, or a bad case of collateral damage on the person in question.

The breakthrough comes at a time of unacceptably high numbers of civilian casualties caused by the current fashion for hipsters. As a glance at any street scene shows, the gulf between self-image and reality has been harshly exposed by low-cut waistlines. With the trend even extending to the display of "builder's cleavage", this is not the only gulf being exposed.

Whether the new technology can put an end to such horrors remains to be seen. For the moment, QinetiQ promises only that, if mass-produced, its 3-D imaging units will cost as little as €42 each, and could help shoppers select garments "that best flatter their figures".

The body-mapping would have to be complemented by "body-modelling and size-extraction software," provided by retailers. The company is now talking to the retail sector about the idea, and hopes it could be operational within 18 months.