The Perfect Trousers for the Pear Body Shape

Pear Shape – Foundations

The trousers foundations are the main structure that we’re going to use to draft our trousers. They define how much ease there is around your crotch and the upper thigh, in other words, how comfortable the trousers will be. There’s 4 foundations: The Culottes, the Trousers, the Slacks and the Jeans. The Culottes have the most amount of ease and the Jeans the least.

All these foundations are for fabrics without elasticity, but if you want to make a pattern for activewear or sportswear that goes tight to your body, you can modify one of those foundations to achieve it.

As I said before, the foundations don’t play a big role in changing your body type or proportions, so I will leave the explanation here. If you want to learn more about foundations and how to draft them, click here

Pear Shape – Waistbands

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.

• High waist: The high waisted trousers normally sit under your bust and they will help elongate your legs and shorten your torso. If you don’t have the “standard” proportions, you can always play around with the length of the pants to balance them out. This waistline is good for a pear shape because it will draw attention away from your hips.
• Natural waist: This can also be called the Mid rise and it sits on the natural waist (below your ribcage). This is the best option for people with balanced proportions and also great for the pear shape.
• Low waist: You can make the low waisted trousers as low as you want, but the general rule is they sit around 5cm below your natural wait. This option will shorten your legs and elongate your torso. It is also a bad idea for the pear shape because it’ll draw attention to your hips and make them look bigger.

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.

Pear Shape – Leg-lines

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.

Pear Shape – Length

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:

• Shorten your trousers: If you want to shorten the appearance of your legs. You will want to do that if your legs are longer than the “standard” or if your torso is shorter, to balance it out.
• Lengthen your trousers: Do this if your legs appear short or if your torso is long and you want to balance it out.

Play around with the body proportions and the waistlines and see how you like it best. It’s all about balance.

Pear Shape – Details

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.

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.

Pear Shape – Fabric and Colours

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.

Choose your Trousers

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.