To ascertain a basic understanding of your body type:

Measure your bust at the fullest part

Measure your hips at the fullest part (often the groin or upper thighs)

Measure your waist at the narrowest point

I will use a hypothetical woman with 38 inch hips to discuss how your results may affects your body shape.

Women who do not have a very defined waist, ie, neither hip nor bust measurement is more than 8 inches greater than the waist measurement, are rulers. This can also be called the banana. An example might be a woman who has 38 inch hips, a 32 inch waist, and a 37 inch bust. Her hips are nearly the same size as her bust, but her waist is not very defined. If a ruler feels she has a belly she wants to hide, she may prefer to follow guidelines for an apple.

If your waist measurement is bigger than your hips or your bust measurements, you are an apple. An example would be a woman with a 35 inch bust, 39 inch waist, and 38 inch hips.

If your hips are your widest measurement by more than two inches, you are a pear. An example would be a woman with a 35 inch bust, 25 inch waist, and 38 inch hips.

If your bust is your largest measurement by more than two inches, you are an inverted triangle or strawberry. An example would be a woman with a 41 inch bust, 32 inch waist, and 38 inch hips.

If your bust and your hips are roughly the same size (within two inches), and your waist is at least 8-10 inches smaller you are an hourglass. An example is a woman with a 37 inch bust, 27 inch waist, and 38 inch hips.

That advice is wrong and doesn’t work for my body type

Body type advice is very, very limited (I will discuss this more in the final section) but can be useful for three reasons:

Many women do not have a sense of what their bodies actually look like and are hung up on a particular part or measurement. Having a sense of your silhouette can make a big difference-- you may feel like you have a belly but if your waist is tiny relative to your hips, you may look better thinking about how to play up your proportions rather than hide your belly.

2)It can help you understand why garments fit you the way they do, and why you have a particular set of fit challenges.

3. Many women who are frustrated with their body would like to look more like an elongated hourglass. Understanding how your body overlaps or differs from this type can help you improve the way you dress. However, it is important to note that this is not every woman’s goal but is a potential starting point.

   When looking for clothes, understand that most mall manufacturers are cutting their garments for a woman who has a slight pear shape (bust 7-8 inches larger than waist, hips about 10 inches larger than waist). This is the most common body type and manufacturers are interested in fitting as many women as possible into a given size. Many women post to FFA looking for the perfect brand that caters to their body type. Some brands may run curvier or straighter, but in general, there are very, very few brands that set out to cater to, say, the apple shaped woman. In general, you are going to have to buy clothing to fit the largest part of your body, and be prepared to either get things tailored, or buy things where a looser fit does not matter. However, it is worth paying attention to cuts that work for you.

Mix-n-Match Guide to Dressing Your Body Type

All we can really do is draw attention to different parts of the body. That’s all “Dress Your Body Type” guides are doing: they are telling you which body parts to draw attention to, and which ones to draw attention away from, in order to make your body look most like a tall slim hourglass. So rather than assume you want to look like a tall slim hourglass, we’ll just talk about how to draw attention to different body parts, and let you pick the parts you’d like to highlight and minimize.

Here’s some examples:

A ruler who wants to do the extreme 50's/New Look hourglass. FOCUS: bust, waist, hips DEFOCUS: shoulders, belly

An hourglass who wants to look more androgynous. FOCUS: Shoulders, legs. DEFOCUS: bust, waist, hips.

General Principles

If you want to make something look bigger, you can either add physical volume or add visual weight. If you want to make something look smaller, you’re usually stuck with putting visual weight elsewhere (since if we could remove physical volume at will the whole diet industry would have collapsed).

Adding physical volume is pretty straightforward. This just means that you’re going to wear your clothes so that they stand out from your body a bit in the area you want to look bigger. Ruffles, gathers, pleats, structure, peplums, padding and even thick fabrics are all ways to accomplish this.

Visual weight is a little more nebulous. This is the idea that certain elements of a composition will draw the viewer’s eye more strongly than others. If you think of your clothed body as a composition of sorts, then you can fool viewers into thinking that certain body parts are larger than they really are by tricking the viewer’s eye into spending more time focusing on those body parts. We say that elements that successfully draw the viewer’s eye have more visual weight. In general, you can give a body part more visual weight with light colors (especially white), bright colors, shiny texture and bold patterns.

If you want to make a body part appear smaller, you’re trying to do the opposite: you want the viewer’s eye to spend as little time as possible on that part before moving on. So here you’d be looking for dark colors and matte textures. (This is where the “black is slimming” advice comes from.)

One last important factor is the power of unbroken lines. If you want something to appear longer, make sure it appears as a single unbroken shape, so that the eye can move smoothly from one end to the other. If you want something to appear shorter, break it into smaller segments. This can apply to the whole body (this makes her look taller than this because the top and pants are the same color), or to the the leg line (nude pumps are a common example), or to anything else you’d like to lengthen or shorten.

That’s all there is to it! However, I’d rather do this than work, so let’s do some examples with specific body parts.

A. Shoulders

i. To give them more focus: epaulettes, color blocking, crazy shoulders, doo-dads;

ii. To give them less focus: raglan sleeves, dolman sleeves, deep sccop/V necks (this breaks up the horizontal line across the shoulders, making it appear shorter). Also, try emphasizing your hips.

B. Bust

i. To give it more focus: ruffles, empire waists, breast pockets;,

ii. To give it less focus: unadorned necklines, also try emphasizing the shoulders or hips.

C. Waist

A note on the waist: So remember up top, when we said that giving things visual weight makes them look bigger? That means that if you try to draw a lot of focus to your waist you may end up making it look bigger. If a small waist is one of your figure goals, dressing is going to be a balancing act between drawing attention to the waist so that the viewer will notice it is small, and drawing attention away from the waist so that it appears smaller. Just know that adding visual weight to the waist will rarely make the waist appear smaller. (This is why I disagree with the “Add a belt to create a defined waist!” school of advice.) That being said:

i. To give it more focus: Belts, of course, contrast waist panels, other waist details;

ii. To give it less focus: dresses without a waist seam, loose or boxy tops. Also try emphasizing shoulders, bust, hips, or legs.

D. Belly

i. To give it more focus (I suspect this is going to be an unpopular figure flattery goal, but what the hell): belting above or below or over the bump (sorry for the example picture – this is just such an uncommon figure goal that there are very few pictures of people wearing this style), an obviously distorted pattern, babydolls with a full skirt;

ii. To give it less focus: dark colors with a light/bright cardigan/jacket open on top, strategic draping, tops that skim over the belly, curved shirttails, structured jackets. Also try emphasizing shoulders, bust, hips, or legs.

E. Hips/Butt

i. To give them more focus: full skirts, hip pockets, pleated pants, blingy back pockets, belts worn at the hip, cargo pants, crazy skirt shapes, other hip details;

ii. To give them less focus: simple bottoms. Also try emphasizing shoulders and bust.

F. Legs

i. To give them more length: skinny silhouettes, unbroken lines of color.

ii. To give them less length: wider silhouettes, divided lines of color.

Introduction

There are six elements of art—one of which is color. As fashion is a way of creative expression like any forms of art, we can apply the various elements and principles of art to come up with a coherent, aesthetically pleasing outfit. Color is overlooked by many people when it comes to dressing themselves, often opting to go for safe neutrals instead. Some out of fear but mostly because of unfamiliarity, which is what this guide aims to change because when used well color can be one of the best ways to make your outfits stand out.

The Color Wheel

To understand color matching we must familiarize ourselves with the basic color wheel, shown here. You can generally reduce any strangely named color to the 12 basic ones in the color wheel. Colors like crimson, goldenrod and ultramarine are pretty much just red, yellow and blue.

Another thing to note about color is the temperature of each. We can classify colors into either being warm or cool. Warm colors have golden undertones while cool ones have blue undertones. The easiest way to understand this is to think of warm colors as colors that evoke sunshine and heat and cool colors are those that impart a sense of calmness and iciness. This is especially important in the context of fashion because we have to take into consideration our skin tones when dressing. Generally speaking if you have a warm-tone skin color you will look best in warm colors and vice-versa. Here are the warm and cool colors in the color wheel.

Color Harmonies

Now comes the fun part. In color theory there are a great deal of color harmonies but we will focus on just five basic ones: monochromatic, complementary, analogous, triadic and split-complementary.

Monochromatic

Coming from the root words mono, meaning one and chroma, meaning color, monochromatic color schemes are made up of shades of just one base color. Some samples 1 2 3. A color scheme of burgundy, salmon and cherry red is a monochromatic scheme. Contrary to popular belief monochromatic does not automatically mean grayscale or black and white. Technically speaking wearing various grays and blacks is monochrome but the term does not exclusively refer to just those colors. A better term for black and white color schemes would be achromatic, literally meaning without color.

Complementary

Complementary colors are colors that are directly across each other in the color wheel. There are six complementary colors in the wheel. This dual scheme is very appealing to the eye and is often used in movies, like in Amelie (red and green) and Transformers (blue and orange). A caveat: complementary color schemes can be too harsh or bright for some. A good way to try a complementary color combo without seeming too loud is to wear a muted shade of one or both colors, like in this red/green outfit. She tempered the fire engine red of her dress with the subdued olive cardigan. In this other example the colors in the outfit are both muted shades of blue and orange, making for a striking combination without looking comical.

Analogous

Analogous colors are three colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. It is often confused with monochromatic schemes. Usually there is just one dominant color while the others are used as accents. Samples 1 2 3. Analogous color schemes are easy, safe and reliable combos but using various tones of each color gives a nuanced, sophisticated palette.

Triadic

A triadic color scheme uses three colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel. Triadic color schemes look very vibrant. A classic example would be your primary color scheme of red, blue and yellow, as seen in this outfit. In another example, this outfit utilizes a triadic scheme of orange, violet and yellow. Again, if this seems too bright for you, you can opt for muted shades of triadic color schemes to make it more wearable, like in this one (red/blue/yellow).

Split-Complementary

The split-complementary color scheme is a variation of the complementary color scheme. You take one color, look into its complementary color and take the two colors beside it, as shown in this diagram. This is a rather unusual way of combining colors and while it’s tricky, the impact is worth it if you get it right.

Neutrals

When talking about color in the context of fashion we cannot forget neutrals. Neutrals often make up the bulk of our wardrobes and some are content with dressing exclusively in neutrals. Think of neutrals as foolproof colors that can be paired with most anything. Common neutrals in fashion are black, white, navy, gray and brown along with the innumerable shades of each. Less common ones are olive, taupe and some very dark and muted shades of plum. Do take note that this is not a definitive list of neutrals.

Putting it All Together

It seems daunting given all this information, but it’s easier once you realize that there are basic guidelines underlying every color combination. In this example we see 2/3 of a triadic color scheme (green/violet/orange without the orange). In here, an extremely muted primary color combination. This outfit may seem like a bunch of things chosen haphazardly, but it actually has two color schemes going on: a complementary one of blue and orange and an analogous palette of blues and greens.

An easy way to wear color would be to pair a bright hue with one or more neutrals, as seen in these examples 1 (violet with black and gray) 2 (aqua blue with white and black) 3 (red and black) 4 (bright mustard with navy and black) 5 (tangerine with black and nude). The neutral/s will temper the vividness of the bright hue, making it easier to pull off colors if you’re not used to them. Another way to utilize neutrals would be to use neutral colored accessories if you’re wearing a colorful outfit, like in this example. The black accessories provide a nice edge and contrast to her otherwise pastel sweet monochromatic mint green outfit.

Pairing neutrals with any of the aforementioned color harmonies gives coherence to your outfit. In this example we see an analogous scheme of blues and greens paired with black. In here a complementary combo of red/green with black and white.

Using color as an accent is one way to ease your way into wearing color especially if you’ve grown used to wearing neutrals all the time. If you’re wearing an all-neutral outfit, throwing in a well chosen accessory in an accent color can give new life to your usual coordinates.

Conclusion

It’s important to remember that there are thousands of possible colors and correspondingly, thousands of possible color combinations that this guide is merely an introduction. Look around and you’ll see all sorts of unexpected color palettes. Mother Nature can serve as your best teacher.

Part of developing your eye is making mistakes and learning from ridiculous color combos. Master the basics and then experiment. Use the info here as a rough guide, not some sort of set in stone rulebook and try not to adhere to old fashioned views like not pairing navy with black because that will just hold you back.

Have fun!