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The design and testing of clothing for activewear requires complex assessments of the suitability of the clothing when the body is in motion. The purpose of this paper is to investigate full body 3D scanning of active body poses in order to develop “watertight” digital models and half-scale dress forms to facilitate design, pattern making and fit analyses. Issues around creating a size set of scans in order to facilitate fit testing of activewear across a size range were also explored.

Researchers experimented to discover effective methods for 3D body capture in the cycling position and reconstruction of the body in a reliable way. In total, 25 cyclists were scanned and size representatives were selected from these participants. Methods of creating half-scale forms were developed that make optimum use of modern materials and technologies. Half-scale dress forms were created in two active positions in a range of sizes for fit testing and design. A set of half-scale and full-scale bike shorts in two styles were manufactured and fit tested on the half-scale forms compared to fit testing on the scan participants to test validity of this method of assessing fit.

Issues in capturing and reconstructing areas occluded in the scanning process, and reconstructing the interface with the bicycle seat were addressed. Active digital forms were developed across the size range, from which both digital avatars and physical mannequins were developed for pattern development and fit testing. The production and use of precisely half-scaled tools for garment testing was achieved and validated by comparing fit test results in active positions on the half-scale forms and on participants who were scanned to create these forms.

Design modifications for active positions to date are based on linear measurements alone, which do not define the 3D body adequately. Despite much research using body scanners, only limited data exist on the body in active poses, and the concept of creating half-scale forms by scanning fit models throughout the size range in active body positions is a novel concept. The progress made in resolving material and process experiments in creating the actual half-scale forms, and testing their suitability for fit testing provides a basis for further research aimed at developing similar dress forms for other activewear garments.

For most people, especially those with fixed incomes, household budgets have to be balanced and sometimes the balance is precarious. With price rises of foods, there is a switch to a cheaper substitute within the group, or if it is a food for which there is no real substitute, reduced purchases follow. The annual and quarterly reviews of the National Food Survey over the years have shown this to be so; with carcase meat, where one meat is highly priced, housewives switch to a cheaper joint, and this is mainly the reason for the great increase in consumption of poultry; when recently the price of butter rose sharply, there was a switch to margarine. NFS statistics did not show any lessening of consumer preference for butter, but in most households, with budgets on a tight string, margarine had to be used for many purposes for which butter had previously been used. With those foods which have no substitute, and bread (also milk) is a classic example, to keep the sum spent on the food each week about the same, the amount purchased is correspondingly reduced. Again, NFS statistics show this to be the case, a practice which has been responsible for the small annual reductions in the amount of bread consumed per person per week over the last fifteen years or so; very small, a matter of an ounce or two, but adequate to maintain the balance of price/quantity since price rises have been relatively small, if fairly frequent. This artifice to absorb small price rises will not work, however, when price rises follow on one another rapidly and together are large. Bread is a case in point.

Baudelaire (1863) and Benjamin (1983) used the term flaneur to denote a modern man who could evocatively describe social life in urban areas. A flaneur was poetically to describe the ephemeral nature of modern urban life, but without acting as a consumer. Here I approach Las Vegas from the perspective of a flaneur, and discuss the possibilities in that city for flanerie today. I introduce the concept pseudo-flanerie, and apply it to postmodern tourism. In Las Vegas, pseudo-flaneurs wander from one impersonation of a city/culture/era to another, stroll from one game to another, and move from one presentation of self to another. However, surveillance, social control, and the organizing principles of capitalism structure each. I also discuss pseudo-flanerie in Las Vegas in terms of temporality, morality, and consumption practices. I find that the flaneur’s traditionally anti-consumer stance has been endangered in tourist cities like Las Vegas, where mock cities have commodified city-like experiences to tourists who ultimately pay to engage in practices traditionally associated with flaneurs. A postmodern tourist environment like Las Vegas, therefore, creates the conditions for the pseudo-flaneur to emerge.

This paper presents a method to fabricate a fitting-mannequin using 3D-scanning, modeling and printing technologies.

Scan data were obtained from 12 subjects with body size in the average range, selected from 208 women aged 20–29. The 3D-scan data were modified by selecting cross-sections from the cloud data, symmetrizing body shapes and obtaining mean points of body shapes. Fifteen spline curves, generated by connecting the mean points on the X–Y plane, were used as sketches and loft features to create the 3D mannequin models. A lower-body fitting mannequin was printed with polylactic acid plastic using a fused deposition-modeling 3D printer.

The cross-section circumference discrepancies among the 3D-printed mannequins in each step were within 1%, demonstrating the applicability and reliability of the 3D technologies proposed for mass customization.

The proposed methodology demonstrates the value of using 3D-scanning data to manufacture fitting-mannequins via mass customization. The study demonstrates the possibility and practicality of using 3D techniques to produce commercially viable fitting mannequins for the fashion industry.