European Union tackles women's clothing

LONDON, July 5 (UPI) -- Having tackled monetary policy and employment rights, the European Union is taking on consistency in the sizing of women's clothing.

The European Committee for Standardization wants Britain and other EU countries to scrap traditional clothes sizing in favor of one that actually fits, The Telegraph reported Thursday.

In Britain, for example, the traditional ranking of size 4 to size 32 would be replaced by a system in which dresses and blouses are labeled by their actual measurements. Trousers would be sold by waist measurement and dresses by bust and hip measurements.

"As a woman who shops, it would be fantastic," Rebecca Unsworth at the Textile Institute, told The Telegraph. "Our body shapes are changing and as we become a more multi-cultural nation the traditional British figure no longer exists."

The proposal is part of a plan to get EU countries to adopt standard metric methods of labeling products. Under the plan, clothing makers would have more flexibility in how they cut their clothes and no longer would have to follow a standard sizing template.