What is your Body Type?

 Let's continue with the Key# 3 of The 5 Keys to Dressing Well

FLATTER YOUR BODY LINES, PROPORTIONS AND SCALE

The Main Body Types

1. Round or Apple 
2. Hourglass
3. Inverted Triangle
4. Triangle or Pear
5. Rectangle



BODY TYPES

1. Round or Apple: Has no defined waist.  Has rounded shoulders. Full around the tummy.
2. Hourglass: Has a definite waist.  Wears the same size top and bottom. Has a defined bust.
3. Inverted Triangle: Wears a larger size on top half and a smaller on bottom. Has wider shoulders than hips. Usually flat rear.
4. Triangle or Pear: Smaller on top, bigger size on bottom. Shoulders are narrower than hips. Has a clearly defined waist. 
5. Rectangle: Almost no curves. Body is straight. Wears the same size for top and bottom. Has a minimal bust. Flat hips and bottom. Almost no waist definition.

Which one is your body type? Do you already know? Can you just tell by looking at the drawing and then looking at yourself in a full length mirror?

You actually cannot alter your basic body shape, because it is based on your bone structure. You can influence on the amount of fat you have, although where you accumulate that fat is genetically determined. No matter how hard we work our muscles, we can only increase their tone and size, but we cannot alter our overall body shape. And we shouldn't obsess about that which we cannot control, remember Epictetus?

The basis to having personal style, is self-acceptance, and from self-acceptance the next step is self-confidence. We need to be self confident in order to show, portray and delight others with our personal style. The idea is for us to understand our basic body shape, and make the best of it! We should learn how to dress for our body shape, so that we can flatter those parts of our body that we are most proud of. In general what we try to achieve no matter what our body shape is, is balance.

Yes, again we find this wonderful word, BALANCE. So we strive to visually show a balanced body. What is a balanced body? It is a body that follows the vertical line of your spine, that is equally distributed on both sides of that "line" whose parts are in proportion, to itself. So it is about achieving visual balance and proportion. Not about trying to be somebody else, or a different shape from ours.

PROPORTIONS

So how do we find our proportions? We use what artists have always used to draw the human body. Our bodies are divided into five sections composed of eight parts. The eight parts are

• the head (one head size)
• neck to waist (two head-sizes)
• midsection or crotch (one head size)
• crotch to knees (two head-sizes)
• knees to soles of feet (two head-sizes)

we use our own head size as the measurement to guide us.

GOLDEN MEAN RATIO

When we want to dress ourselves with style, we use the Golden Mean ratio, which is 3:5:8. It means we visually divide our body in two parts, from the top of our head to our waist (3 head sizes) from our waist to our feet ( 5 head sizes) for a total of 8 head sizes overall. Our goal is to achieve balance and proportion through our clothing choices. And remember that the most important part of our body we should strive to call attention to, is our face!

Next post: Tools to find out what your body type is....if you don't already know! Stay tuned

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