Fashion 101- Body Conscious

I’m going to postpone Beauty Shop Saturday and Sundays With Lloyd until later this week so we can finish our discussion of Fashion 101. Knowing your body is also important to your wardrobe.  Our bodies all fall into one of these categories: the pear, the tomato, the rectangle, the hourglass.  Knowing where to put the focus can help us buy clothing that flatters.  Remember, the goal is a good shape.  And the best shape, the hourglass. So let’s start there.  If you have an hourglass shape, you are busty and hippy but you have a small waist.  Think Marilyn Monroe.  Congratulations.  We are all jealous.  You look great in anything that makes your waist the focus and shows off your curves.  The only thing that I wouldn’t recommend for you…something shapeless.  It makes the rest of us wonder why you are hiding under there? The rectangle is for those of us girls that never really “bloomed.”  You have a more athletic build, your shoulders are about the same size as your hips and your waist is almost equally proportioned.  While this may seem like a curse, you have an enviable quality- because your shoulders and hips are about the same size, you look balanced.  Finding clothing that fits isn’t quite so difficult.   The best way to “create” a waist is ignore it.  Yup, that’s right.  By wearing empire waists and ruching around your middle, you’ll give the illusion that its there.  Clothing to avoid- belts that sit right at the waist. Then there is the tomato shape.  This simply means that you carry your weight around your waist and your limbs tend to be slender.  This means that if you’re a tomato, you should be wearing skirts and shorts and skinny jeans a LOT.  Show off those slender gams!  Items for you to avoid include things that are tight around the waist.  It is more important to let shirt fall loosely to your hip. Last of all, the pear.  The pear shape carries the weight in the hips and generally the shoulders are narrower.  Pear girls should emphasize the tops of their bodies.  Show off how tiny you are on top!  To balance out those shoulders, you get to wear anything you want for details on them.  You’ll look great in boat necks and puffed sleeves.  What to avoid…pencil skirts. We could definitely get more complicated than these simple and basic shapes.  But these are the general ones.  Keep in mind that when you gain weight, you can change shapes.  You’ll never grow a longer torso or broader shoulders, but you can gain and lose in the breasts, the tummy, the hips and the tush.  So while you may have been a hourglass as a teenager, now that you’ve had a few kids, maybe you’re now a tomato.  Ah the joys of motherhood.  Just remember to assess your shape for what it is now.  And keep conscious of it!