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EN 13402 is a European standard for labeling clothes sizes. It is based on body dimensions, measured in centimetres. It aims to replace many older national dress-size systems, starting in the year 2006.

There are three approaches for size-labeling of clothes:

• body dimensions: The product label states for which range of body dimensions the product was designed. (Example: bike helmet labelled “head girth: 56–60 cm”, shoe labeled “foot length: 28 cm”)
• product dimensions: The label states characteristic measures of the product. (Example: jeans labeled with their inner-leg length in centimeters or inches, i.e. not the – several centimeters longer – inner leg length of the intended wearer)
• ad-hoc size: The label provides a size number or code with no obvious relationship to any measurement. (Example: Size 12, XL)

Traditionally, clothes have been labeled using many different ad-hoc size systems. This approach has led to a number of problems:

• Country-specific or even vendor-specific labels create additional costs.
• Ad-hoc sizes have changed with time, often due to “vanity labelling”, an inflation in body dimensions associated with a size, to avoid confronting aging customers with uncomfortable anthropometric truths.
• Mail-order purchasing requires accurate methods for predicting the best-fitting size.
• Many garments need to be selected based on two or three body dimensions to fit adequately, and not a single scalar.
• Scalar ad-hoc sizes based on 1950s anthropometric studies are no longer adequate, as changes in nutrition and life styles have shifted the distribution of body dimensions.

Therefore, the European standards body CEN started in 1996 the process of designing a new modern system of labeling clothes sizes, resulting in the standard EN 13402 “Size designation of clothes”.

It is based on:

• body-dimensions
• the metric system (SI - The International System of Units (abbreviated SI from the French language name Système International d’Unités))
• data from new anthropometric studies of the European population performed in the late 1990s
• similar existing international standards (ISO 3635, etc.)

The EN 13402 standard consists of four parts: