Forget falling profits, foreign competition and the whim of international trends; the biggest single problem facing the British fashion industry today is selling to real women. And for all the women out there in their bras and pants, getting hot and cross in the changing rooms, the biggest single problem is getting clothes to fit. If the industry, worth £16 billion a year, could find a solution, it could change the way we shop for ever, even bring an end to the eternal wail: "I don't have a thing to wear."

Take a look at the women on the previous pages. What do they have in common? Their dress size; it's a size 14. Yet none of them are the same height or weight. They range from 5ft 2in at the lower end to nearly 6ft at the upper. Some may share exact measurements, but they still won't be the same shape: busts will be lower, waist higher and bottoms droopier. So how does the British fashion industry cater for them all?

The answer, according to the experts, is that it can't. What we have is a wasteful, messy system by which manufacturers are churning out clothes that fit nobody, in the hopes that they might just fit somebody. Returned goods account for 30% of all customer transactions each year. "All we have in the shops are clothes that are an acceptably bad fit for most people," says Professor Ray Harwood, the head of the textile engineering and manufacturing research group at Leicester's De Montfort University. "Retailers make clothes to fit a series of statistical averages, but by definition Mrs. Average can't exist. At the moment, everyone is losing out."