Have you been thinking about how to dress your Pear Body Shape? Well, you’re in the right place, I made this article to show you everything you need to know to choose the best pair of pants for your figure. Be aware that there’s no right or wrong answers, these are all opinions!
Here I will explain the best trousers for your shape based on “theory” and then I’ll also show you images so you can decide if you’re going to follow the standards or your preferences.
The Pear body shape is known to have wide hips compared to the rest of the body. Sometimes your shoulder width might even be smaller than your waist, giving the illusion of a pear.
Pears should add volume to the top part of your body and draw attention away from your hips. Your trousers should:
Body shape is not the only thing to take into account when choosing the right trousers, your proportions will also play a big role. Let’s look into the perfect trousers for the pear body shape.
The next part of the trousers is the Waistline. It has two purposes, one telling our eyes where the waist is and two, changing the proportions of your body. Let’s define 3 general waistlines: the high waisted, the mid-rise and the low waisted.
In theory, the pear shape you should lean towards mid to high-rise waistlines to draw less attention to the lower part of your body. I believe the waistband has more to do with body proportions than body shape, but in this case it also has a lot to do with your body shape.
Having said all this, you decide which waistline you like best in this picture! I have also done some research about the width of the waistbands and I find that to be related to the whole outfit and not only the trousers, so I won’t explain it here.
The next pants characteristic is the length of your trousers. As you know, the main reason to change the length is the season of the year, but another reason is to balance your proportions.
If we look at the image on the left, there are a couple of lengths that have an official name, but you can make them any length you want. If you want to change the body proportions, do the following:
Play around with the body proportions and the waistlines and see how you like it best. It’s all about balance.
Let’s talk about the most important part to create the Perfect Trousers for your Pear Body Shape, the leg-lines. The idea is to add or remove volume from the areas in your body that need it.
There’s 6 main leg-lines: the slim, the tapered, the straight, the boot cut, the bell bottoms and finally the wide legs.
As a pear, you have to “hide” your hips. To do that you should stay away from skinny or tapered leg-lines because they will make the width of your hips more obvious. Another option is to match the volume of your hips by choosing a leg-line with the same width like the straight trousers, or that adds volume at the bottom like the boot cut.
Looking at this picture, I agree that the the styles I like the most are the straight and the wide-leg and the ones I like the least are the skinny and the tapered. I’m not fully convinced about the boot cut or the bell bottoms, what about you? Remember to decide for yourself which ones you like the most!
We’ve talked about the trouser parts, now let’s look into details we can add to the design to draw attention to certain areas. By adding details you’ll be able to change the illusion of your body shape.
Let’s see some of the details you can add:
As we already discussed, the pear body shape needs to remove attention from the hips and details in that area will do the opposite! Things like pockets, pleats and belt loops will emphasise the size of your hips and might not work. Other things like turn ups or distress on the lower part of the trousers might be good options for you.
Again, decide for yourself, do you see a difference in the picture with the options with details and without? Which ones do you like the most? It’s crazy how one little thing like belt loops or the fly can change your body shape.
The last thing we can define when making trousers is the fabric and the colour. Both things will help balance the look and slightly change your body proportions.
Let’s look into the fabric first. Light weight fabrics will soften your figure by showing your curves and heavy weight fabrics will sharpen them. Light fabrics are a good option for the pear body shape because it’ll “hide” your hips.
If we look at the colours, they will draw more or less attention and change the perception of your body shape. Light colours will make you appear wider and dark ones will make you look slimmer. You can see that illusion on the picture on the left, what do you see?
I use fabrics and colours to balance my looks. If you choose a wide leg-line, then maybe choose a dark colour and if you go for a slim look, choose a lighter colour. The same goes for the fabrics, see what you like the most on your body. Maybe you hate straight trousers but if you try a flowy fabric, you might love them.
In your case, dark colours always work better than light ones. They hide the width of your hips and balance it out with the rest of your body.
And that’s it for trousers! You’re ready to choose the Perfect Trousers for your Pear Body Shape, and to help you do that I created this matrix. In here I’ve illustrated all the trouser types that have a name but feel free to use any combination you want.
The horizontal line shows you all the leg-lines and the vertical line the foundations, so go ahead and have fun creating!
When learning how to dress the pear 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 shapes. 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. Pears are bottom heavy, so the idea is to add width to your shoulders to look more balanced. If you like narrow necklines, you can always add embellishments like collars or ruffles to make up for lost volume.
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. Like I said before, you want to widen your shoulders, so high necklines will not draw enough attention to give that effect.
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. As a pear, both options are good but rectangular shapes might be better to show your shoulders.
The theory says that pear body shapes want to emphasise the shoulder and bust areas, which means that low and wide necklines will look best on them. With your body shape I would also go for embellishments around the neck like big collars, lace trims or ruffles as they will draw attention to the width of your shoulders.
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 pear body shape wants a sleeve that adds interest and volume to your shoulders while hiding the hips. This means avoiding any type of puff at the bottom of your sleeve and adding volume at the top. If you opt for a short sleeve, go for a puffy sleeve.
If on the other hand you want to wear straps, thin straps will elongate your shoulders and wide straps will do the opposite. The thin option is a good one for the pear body shape.
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
As a pear, shoulder embellishments are your best option if you’re looking for balance. I would stay away from hip embellishments as they will draw attention to your hips.
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.
