Clothes for the Shaped Silhouette

Independent Styling Consultant Liz Prest© discusses the sort of clothes that suit a shaped bodyline and what to avoid:

“If you’re lucky to have a shaped bodyline then your best look is go for styles that emphasize the waist and follow your natural contour, such as:
• Clothes that shape into the waist
• Belted styles that define the waist
• Trousers that have darts
• Fitted or tucked in tops and skirts, such as Eleganza’s stretch lace tops from Sahara http://tinyurl.com/2wumsdl
• Dresses belted into waist or fitted and flared
• Shaped jackets with curved hemlines

Styles to avoid include:
• Boxy styles or no waist-shaping
• Thigh length jackets and tops
• Slim cut trousers tapered at the ankle*
• No waistband styles
• Short, boxy or cropped tops

The shaped bodyline has midriff and waist definition so draw attention away from the lower hipline and thigh area.
*Fortunately Eleganza, http://tinyurl.com/yhx3mug has a good range of summer trousers in linen and other lovely fabrics that flow and don’t taper to the ankle.”

Liz offers a range of personal consultations in S West England & S Wales on body shape & sizing, colour, styling advice and wardrobe management. If you would like more information or to book a session contact info@eleganza-clothing.com or telephone 0845 833 0423.

Body shapes

One’s body shape takes on more significance in the summer when we wear lighter clothes and venture into holiday and swim wear. A woman’s shape and silhouette is rarely perfect – we all have our good points and less good points and the trick is to know your shape and choose clothes to complement. In A Guide to Elegance (21 April 2010) Madame Dariaux considers that the female figure can be reduced to a simple I or O shape or intermediate stages between these two letter forms. Another classification of the female shape draws parallels with fruit - apples or pears and yet another refers to geometric symbols such as the Triangle ▲for shapely hips, thighs and rounded bottom, the Rectangle █ representing the straight figure, the Circle ● for a rounded look (First Impressions http://tinyurl.com/3zsq6x).

The easiest classification that I’ve come across is based on the assessment of your silhouette as one of three body shapes - shaped, semi-shaped or straight (Liz Prest© Independent Styling Consultant) where the shaped bodyline has a defined waist and midriff, the semi-shaped has a softer shape with a curved waist and hips (weight gain tends to be on the stomach and hips) whereas the straight bodyline has slim hips and thighs. Of course you can be in between any of these classifications, but at a styling workshop, my non-scientific observation was that most of the women there were semi-shaped. In the next few blogs Liz will look at what style of clothes to look for to suit one of these three body shapes.