Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 29, 1993 TAG: 9306290023
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Madelyn Rosenberg
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And I'm no competition for Dolly Parton. But if I were "a woman of size," I would be one of Joann Boles' biggest fans.
Boles is a professor in clothing and textiles at Virginia Tech. And she's head of a project to create an elusive bathing suit: something that is both comfortable and stylish for women, size 34D and up.
The story behind this suit reads more like an electronics manual than a Victoria Secret catalog, as do many of the stories behind today's research in clothing and fashion.
It begins in the late 1980s when one of Boles' graduate students, Terry Maher, was working on her graduate thesis.
Maher, now a manager for product quality and sourcing at L.L. Bean, was working on a sensor that would measure pressure between a garment and the body. She used a little plastic pillow, made of vinyl "like you use to cover furniture."
She rigged it up with copper sensors and wires that connected to a computer, which, working from the air that filled the pillows, would measure the pressure.
"It was a really elementary idea," Maher said.
And it worked.
Originally, Maher had hoped to be the one to invent the perfect bathing suit.
Her summer job was in a made-to-order bathing suit shop and she had seen the frustration in the women of size.
"The suits, by time they got that big, were not that flattering," Maher said. "Suits they could buy from stores didn't fit or were old-lady styles. If they fit in the top, they were too big on the bottom."
The made-to-order suits were sleek, she said, but expensive - as were the sensors Maher needed to try to create this perfect suit. That's why she decided to create a sensor that hooked to a compressor and computer. (She estimated the sensor itself could be made for $3.)
And then she graduated.
Boles, who teaches classes in swimwear, later found a company that made similar sensors in one, hand-held, compact unit. These sensors did not have to be hooked to a bulky computer.
She bought it, and in her lab at Tech she used it on five models who wore size 10 suits with a D cup. She measured pressure on the shoulders, under the arms, in the center back.
"In the ideal bathing suit, the best distribution of support is not just on the shoulder," she said.
When her data is complete, she will send it off the company and she hopes it can be put to use.
Meanwhile, Boles and others in her department worked on another study looking at the swim teams' competitive suits, which put most of the pressure on the back.
They used some of the suits designed by Judy Knight, an alumna of Tech whose suits, created at Dilorenzo Designs in New York, have appeared in Sports Illustrated. And they are sending Knight some sketches.
The group also plans to make its own suits in the labs at Tech using some of the fabric Knight donated, some of the finest, produced at Liberty Fabric in Woolwine. "We would like to design the suits next year based on what we learn," Boles said.
And rest assured these swimsuits won't be frumpy. The key word, after comfort, is style.
Madelyn Rosenberg, the Roanoke Times & World-News' high-education writer, is based in the New River Valley bureau.
by CNB