Body shape: why you should know it

When clothes shopping, you should focus on the size of the clothes you are buying, but also on the shape of the clothes and if they will complement your silhouette or less. Make it more of a shape question. For this reason, you should know what your body shape is. That way you can embrace your silhouette in its entirety.

Sometimes you might buy a certain piece of clothing and think: “my shoulders look too broad in this” or “my legs don’t look in proportion with this” and so on. Don’t worry though: it’s not your shapes that are wrong, it’s the clothes you are wearing over them that don’t suit them. Don’t force your body into the wrong container: if it doesn’t fit or look good in it, don’t wear it and don’t buy similar pieces again.

How to work out your body shape

Look at yourself on the mirror very carefully and look at where you have more volume. Also, check the size tags of your clothes: you wear one size more for your tops or for your bottoms? Are your undergarments the same size or do you wear one size more for the top or the bottom ones? Look at your shoulders, your waist and your sides. To be able to do this better, have someone take a photograph of you frontally, on the back and on the side. Make sure to have these taken from the waist point and to make sure it has contrast (white clothes on a black wall or black clothes on a white one). Then, when editing your pictures, increase the contrast to be able to see the whole picture better.

Or, you can try looking at the picture below and work it out like this. This is more of a reference though, and it’s just to see where to start working from.

Does it make sense to talk about them?

Now, it’s not exactly correct to fit everyone into six categories, so we’re going to use this as a reference, so we can make a better choice the next time we go clothes shopping or we choose what clothes we are going to wear tomorrow.

The main ones are: triangle/pear, inverted triangle/apple, rectangle, diamond, hourglass and eight (yes, eight). As we go, we’ll discuss what will suit each silhouette and see what works better. By this, we’re not dictating rules that you must follow, rather we’re trying to give advice as to what pieces of clothing you should try. At the end of the day, you’ll wear what works for you.