Jon Tang from the newly launch Vastrm (customized polo shirts) recently posted a link to a New York Times article on customized clothing in the Mass Customization Group on LinkedIn. Here’s the link to the article: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/fashion/on-the-web-design-your-own-clothes.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=todayspaper

In it, the author Stephanie Rosenbloom tests three different customized products: A customized bra, customized jeans and shoes. She used a website by Fruit of the Loom for the customized bra, and MakeYourOwnJeans.com for the jeans, and finally MilkandHoneyShoes.com for the shoes. And she is practically disappointed by all of them. 

She very decidedly doesn’t pick the “leader” in each category. There aren’t a lot of customized lingerie options, but the leader is Evlove. For jeans, it’s IndiDenim, and for shoes it’s Shoes of Prey - whose configurator Milk and Honey Shoes blatantly copied. It looks like she always picked the cheapest option (the bra for example was less than $8, which is less than a mass produced Victoria’s Secret bra). One participant of the discussion on LinkedIn mentioned “ it’s almost as though the author was looking for bad examples”, and another wrote “The products that the reported picked were probably the toughest categories in terms of getting the right fit. (bras and jeans).”

In the end though, it’s wonderful news that the New York Times tried customized apparel, and hopefully they’ll do it again!