I’m sure you’re familiar with the experience of walking all around a store looking for things you need and rummaging through a pile of jeans or khakis or shirts trying to find your size.

Why are stores not segmented by size – rather than by style?

Imagine going to the section with your size and everything in that section fits?  And, I think it would increase store efficiency (often measured in sales per square foot) , because you can easily see an assortment of styles without having to walk around, which would inevitably result in missing things you may have otherwise bought.

And, it would free up sales people to help you rather than spend more than half their time re-folding clothes for display after people have rummaged through piles trying to find their size!

Also, in this scenario, why would mens’ sections need to be staffed – what do sales people do besides helping you find your size? (I’m assuming women probably shop differently).

Producing cotton for clothing has an incredibly negative environmental impact.  It can take more than 5,280 gallons of water to produce a single T-shirt and pair of jeans, and fresh water availability is steadily decreasing worldwide, as demand exceeds supply.  Agricultural water use is a significant culprit in the depletion of major aquifers. And, cotton uses approximately 25% of the world’s insecticides and more than 10% of the pesticides (55 million pounds sprayed on 12.8 million acres), and 2.03 billion pounds of synthetic fertilizers.

Seems like this is a pretty big business opportunity for companies like Gap (or an upstart), to make and market organic and sustainably created synthetic clothing, which is currently hard to find outside of the small clothing section of a Whole Foods store.  The marketing campaign can include public education, so the brand becomes known for something even more important than style. It becomes synonymous with an important environmental (and potentially also social) cause.

The jacket has adaptive insulation pockets, which allow the wearer to adjust the temperature of the jacket in changing weather.

check out what some forecasters from the 1930’s predicted women would wear in 2000. (video below) [thanks, ambidextrous]

Check out this functional t-shirt which displays the strength of wifi signals. $29.95 from Think Geek.

Scientists and engineers and a Cornell design student are developing clothing that has the potential to eliminate viruses before giving you a cold, eats smog, so you can breath cleaner air, and never have to be washed. Microscopic nanoparticles coating the garments can actively eliminate viruses and bacteria.

For more information, click here.

Intellifit has developed a body scanning booth, which measures 200 body measurements in 10 seconds. The Intellifit website, in partnership with several retailers, including Nordstrom, Gap and Levi’s, will compare your measurements with clothing dimensions for a guaranteed fit. Intellifit body scanning is free. There are only a handful of booth locations, but the Company is expanding. Click here for some videos.

Check out this video of a Nike Pro advertisement, a custom box with a Nike Pro t-shirt inside that fills with smoke, clears, and then fills with smoke again, which represents the the key benefit of Nike Pro apparel: that it whisks aways sweat. Cool!

Having managed the technology solution for jeans fit clinics at Gap, I know firsthand the importance of fit to an apparel consumer. An emerging niche of online companies aim to help consumers find perfect fitting apparel. One company, venture-backed Zafu.com, has analyzed the fit of hundreds of jeans from diverse brands on thousands of women, and when a consumer plugs in her particular measurements, and style and size preferences, the site predicts, with an alleged 94% accuracy, a perfect fit. The site links to third-party sites that carry the jeans.

[thanks, Gary, for the tip!]