Are you curious on how to dress the Hourglass Body Shape? In this article I will share with you all the information about what pieces of clothing suit your body shape best, and I will also present some images so you decide if you believe or not! There’s no right or wrong answers, only opinions!
I will give you some background into your shape, and what silhouettes are best for you based on the “standards”, but remember to look at the drawings and decide for yourself.
The Hourglass figure is defined as the “standard” and it means that your hips and shoulders have a similar width and your waist is narrow. This means that the shape of your body reminds of an hour glass. You can sometimes look like a rectangle but with more shaping on the waist. How can you find the Perfect Trousers for your Hourglass Body Shape?
The secret to dress this body shape is that it’s already balanced, so you’ll have to play with top and bottom together. In general, your bottoms should follow these guidelines:
As always, the body proportions will also play a role in some of the trouser characteristics we’re gonna look into so have them in mind. Let’s dive into the perfect trousers for the hourglass body shape.
The waistbands are the part of the trousers/skirts that will sit around your waist. It’s the structure that holds the weight of the trousers. This characteristic will have multiple effects on your body. First, it will draw attention to your waist by saying “hey, this is my waist” and second, it will have an effect on body proportions. There’s 3 main waist levels: the high waisted, the mid-rise and the low waisted.
As an hourglass, you have the “ideal” shape. This means that you should embrace your silhouette. The best waistbands for you are the mid-rise ones. I think the waistband should be more about comfort and balancing your body proportions, what do you think?
If you’re interested in how wide the waistband should be, that has more to do with what the final outfit is than your body shape. The width of the waistband can be used to balance the look as well as different types of belts.
The length of the bottoms is a characteristic that will help balance your body proportions.
There are “official” lengths like the Bermudas, the Jamaicas, or the capri but you can make your pants/skirts as short or long as you want. This is how the length can change your body proportions:
I know it’s very obvious but sometimes these things are easy to forget. The end goal is to balance your proportions so you look proportionate, but again, it’s up to you. If you want to embrace your short legs, go for it!
This characteristic will have the biggest effect on your body proportions because you’ll be able to add or distribute volume however you see fit. Looking at the picture, which leg shape do you think is best for your body shape? Let’s see what the theory says. This information is based on trouser leg-lines but the same applies for skirts
The general rule is that there are 6 main leg-lines: the slim, the tapered, the straight, the boot cut, the bell bottoms and finally the wide legs.
As an hourglass, your body is proportionate, so theoretically you can go for any look as long as you balance it out with the top. For example, if you go for the wide-legs, maybe wear a puffy sleeve on top. If I look at the image I have to agree that I love all the styles, what do you think?
Trouser details are not a part of the trousers but something that can be added to your design to draw attention to different areas. This means you can add the illusion of volume by using them and they can have an effect on your body proportions.
There’s a bunch of design details but here’s a few of them:
If you look at the picture, you have the details I mentioned before illustrated. Do your eyes go to the trousers with the details or without them?
As I’ve said before, the Hourglass figure is already balanced, so there’s no need to add volume anywhere. You can either embrace certain parts of your body or just balance out the t-shirt you’re wearing.
The last thing I want to talk about are fabrics and colours. Again, this is not necessarily a part of the trousers but something you can change to draw attention and show your curves. These two characteristics will have an effect on your body shape.
When we talk about fabric, heavy weight fabrics will stiffen your figure and light weight fabrics will soften it.
If we look at colours, they can be used to draw more or less attention to the lower part of your body. Lighter colours will be more obvious and darker colours more discrete. So if you want to add volume, go for lighter colours.
Use these two characteristics to balance your final look. For example, if your top is light and voluminous, you can choose a light pair of trousers.
Look at this picture, do you see think the left shape is thiner than the middle one? They are the same! That’s the effect of colours on our body shapes.
Now you know what your preferred bottom shapes are, but do you know how many shapes there are? Here you have an overview of all existing trousers and skirts (that have a name) so you can choose which one you like the most! Of course, you can make any combination you want and add all the details or change the waistlines however you see fit. Have fun with it!
The horizontal line shows you all the trouser leg-lines and the vertical line refers to the different foundations (based on ease around your thighs). From here you can add details, change fabrics and colours and even seam lines. Sky’s the limit! We’re a bit closer to learning how to dress your hourglass body shape.
When learning how to dress the hour glass body shape, tops will have the biggest effect on changing the body proportions. This is because tops will influence the 3 main points: the shoulders, the waist and the hips. Remember that the body shape theory only looks at one dimension, so take into account your body proportions and the size of your chest when choosing a design!
Tops can be divided in 6 parts: the shape, the silhouette, neckline, sleeve, length and fabric and colours.
The first two go hand in hand and will be the same for all the body shape. In general, the idea is to always define the waist as much as possible, but of course, this is personal preference so I won’t go too much into it. Once you’ve decided the shape around the waist, it’s time to look into the silhouette. This can be done by moving or converting darts into volume or details. You can do that in two ways:
Let’s add an example. If you are an inverted triangle, you could separate the top and bottom of your design and add gathers to compensate the shoulders. Or if you have small breasts and you want them to appear larger, you can add gathers around your bust. Play around and see what works for you!
Now let’s look into the other characteristics.
The first thing we see in a top is the neckline. To understand how it can change our body type, let’s separate them into groups: the width, the depth and the shape.
Let’s start with the width. Necklines can be either Wide or Narrow. Wide necklines will widen the shoulder and bust areas and Narrow necklines will accentuate the slender look, elongate your silhouette and narrow the shoulders.
The second group is the depth. You can choose between high and low necklines. High will hide your chest and low will elongate your body and break the chest. As an hour glass, if you opt for high necklines, don’t forget to define the waist.
The last group, is the shape. You can either choose round necklines or sharp ones. Round necklines will create curves and won’t draw much attention and sharp shapes will make you look more squared and edgy.
One other thing you can do is add embellishments around the neck like big collars, lace trims or ruffles which will draw attention to your upper body.
The theory says that hour glass body shapes are already balanced, so you can choose any neckline as long as you balance the look to keep looking balanced.
The next thing on the list are sleeves, which can also have a big impact on your body shape. Here we’ll talk about 3 types of sleeves: long, short and straps.
Once you’ve defined the length of the sleeve, you can add volume in different ways:
The hour glass body shape wants a sleeve that balances the neckline and the bottom piece, so play around with adding more or less volume.
If on the other hand you want to wear straps, thin straps will elongate your shoulders and wide straps will do the opposite.
There’s other ways of adding volume and these are embellishments. You can add them to both the shoulders or the wrists and they can be things like
Another part of the top is the length. If you play with the length of the top and the waistband of the bottom, you will be able to change the illusion of your body proportions.
Let’s look at how the length can influence your proportions and shape:
You always have to combine the length with the other characteristics, a bit like what we did with the sleeves.
I’ve shown you some of the necklines and sleeves out there, but don’t forget there’s A LOT more to choose from. Take a look at the image below and remember to always draw your design before making any decisions to see how the volume will be distributed.
