Do You Know Your Body Shapes

Do you know your body shapes? Can you tell the difference between a pear and an hourglass? And of course more importantly, can you dress different body shapes?

With the increasing number of people shopping online, less people are understanding how to dress for their body shape. As I’ve mentioned before in a previous post, it’s great to look online for inspiration but nothing beats trying on clothes. Fashion bloggers dominate the online world with multiple pictures of themselves in fabulous outfits but are ‘real people’ dressing for their shapes or just dressing according to the inspiration they’ve seen online? I see lots of people who’ve bought items online only to return 90% of what was bought and this is not just a one off.

Knowing a clients body shape is the very first thing you need to learn and to understand how to dress every single body shape to help make that person feel fantastic. Once someone knows what body shape they are shopping will become much easier as they can start following a set of rules.

If you’re new to styling I suggest sitting down in a cafe and making a note of all the different body shapes that come in. This is a great exercise and will test your body analysis skills really well. You’ll be surprised how difficult it can be if people are ‘hiding’ underneath their clothes.

Next is to know how to dress a certain body shape. We all have good bits and no so good bits (as I like to call tgem). The trick is to highlight the best parts and disguise the other parts. Does your client have a great waist? Belts and hight waisted shapes could look great on them. Great legs? Show them off!

Even though I’ve been styling for over ten years I’m still continuously being challenged as no one body is exactly the same.

The next thing is to know which shops are best for certain shapes. Once you know this, you’ll find that shopping trips become much more successful. Practice makes perfect…

Keep an eye out today and try to spot the different body shapes!

Elin x