Form and fashion

The Pocket Stylist: Behind the Scenes Expertise from a Fashion Pro on Creating Your Own Look
by Kendall Farr

(Page 3 of 4)

The first thing I do when choosing any piece of clothing for a photo shoot is to visualize how the cut will fit the body. Will the silhouette flatter the subject's shape and size? Will the fabric drape and smooth over her contours? Will the color(s) flatter her skin tone? Are there any interesting details that set it apart from the ordinary? Only after all this do I consider its place in the current trends landscape. Because, frankly speaking, that is the least important factor in how it will look on the subject's body or yours.

In this chapter, I'll ask you to look at your own clothes this way. Since the last rule left in fashion is that there are no rules, a girl first needs to have the clearest possible understanding of her body in order to pull her wardrobe together. To train your eye for your best options, you need to know the basic principles that designers use to construct the clothing you wear. Our work together begins with a brief glossary of fashion fundamentals.

SILHOUETTE: Outline of an outfit (picture a black cameo against a white background), its shape and cut. Designers first express their ideas for a season with the silhouettes they send down the runway. Most important, think of silhouette as the outlined shape or contour of your body and what will flatter it best.

PROPORTION: Individual pieces of an outfit in relation to one another. On the runways, the seasonal combinations of long with short, wide with narrow, tight with loose, that designers devise to keep things new, and which instantly relegate the trendy portions of our wardrobes to obsolete. Examples: a cropped jacket with wide-leg trousers, midthigh-length coat worn with knee-length pencil skirt. Most important, think about proportion in the context of your body proportions and how the clothes and accessories you choose can work in scale and balance with your individual size and shape.

FABRIC: Naturally, you know what fabric is, but you might not know that it must complement and support the silhouette. For example, an A-line skirt or gored skirt in cotton twill has pup tent potential, whereas the same shapes in midweight jersey will drape and move with your body. Pay close attention to the surface quality of fabric, since weaves that add texture to a garment can also add some very unflattering bulk; a surface with shine adds more volume than a matte finish. Some examples: flat versus boucle or mohair wools; matte jersey, which drapes and skims versus high-sheen satin jersey, which adds width and outlines every lump and bump. Matte stretch fabrics and lycra are a girl's (of any size) friend and ally. Fabric is critical to supporting the line of tailored clothing and this is where cheap stuff is the most telling. (We'll talk about when to spend on better fabrics and when bargains will work just fine in chapter 4.)

OPTICAL ILLUSION VERSUS DELUSION: All women should worship the almighty unbroken line. Meaning, we're always looking for silhouettes and proportions that will create the longest-looking body line. This also means that if a "must-have" piece you've clocked in the fashion pages doesn't help you achieve the vertical line it created on the model, you'll leave it in the dressing room and look for a version of the idea that works for you.

Think about these qualities before you worry about whether or not a piece of clothing falls into one of the big trends of the season. This is important to keep in mind, since the idea of anything this basic (but critical) can all but dissolve when you try to navigate the floors of a department store. Listen, I do this for a living and I sometimes feel like I've been caught in a windstorm of must- have big looks. I see racks filled with silly, shrunken proportions, crotch-high skirts, butt-crack-grazing jeans, tricky constructions and details, and versions of the same shapes, colors, and prints from label to label. (This is not fashion telepathy, by the way. Design companies subscribe to trend-forecasting services that provide much of the style prescience needed to predict what we girls may want a year in the future.)

Lots of best of the season fashion ideas seem crazy to me in their disregard of what it means for a woman to move comfortably in her clothes. As I've said before, the ways in which designers tweak and change silhouettes and proportions each season is what keeps fashion interesting (and keeps us buying). But a little of a trend can go a long way and it's often best expressed with accessories (we'll get there in chapter 7). Remember, a trend is only relevant for you if it has a shape that fits and flatters your body. In fact, there are only two kinds of clothes in the fashion universe: those that fit and flatter your body shape and size, and those that don't. Simple, right? There are many ways for a girl to express an individual sense of style without looking like a fashion casualty. The best place to begin is to make trends work for you, rather than trying to turn yourself inside out to adapt to whatever designers are pushing in any season.

What distinguishes good fit for any body at any size? Clothing that skims the outline of your shape. Nothing clings or pulls, nor is anything so oversized that it hides your body's natural outline. When I look at clothing on a body that's in motion in front of the camera, I watch how the construction, fabric, and fit look in a three-dimensional, circular sense; how the front blends into the sides, around to the back, and to the front again, whether the wearer is walking, sitting, or just standing. Is anything pulling, puckering, gapping, or bagging? The next time you put on your favorite pair of pants and a fitted jacket or button-front shirt, rotate slowly in front of your own mirror (try this in heels, please), stand up straight, and roll your shoulders back to add instant length and posture. Stand, walk in place, sit, and pay attention to the following areas.

• Wherever buttons close
• Across your bust
• Bra lines under your arms and across your back
• Around the armholes
• Across your sleeves and shoulders
• Across your stomach
• Fabric across your hips and belly
• Across your bottom and crotch

If any of these places are visibly tight or loose or if you see deep, obvious creasing or gapping, the line of the outfit in total will be thrown off. The line and fit of your clothing are critical elements of your personal style. Regardless of how much you've paid for something or whose name is on the label, bad fit is never going to flatter your body shape. If it's not flattering, what's the point of wearing it? For that matter, what's the point of buying it?

We all have a tendency to define ourselves by the parts of our anatomy that give us the most grief in the fitting room. And why wouldn't we? Everything we've ever read about dressing for our body types deconstructs our bodies, one part at a time, into a series of hot spots. None of us is our boobs, butts, hips, or thighs; rather, we are uniquely the sum of our parts. Yet just about every woman I know and many I've worked with (yes, many famous women, including models who are paid for their proportions) will immediately talk to me about her perceived hot spots. Trust me, this is not the first step to understanding the shape of your body. Shopping for clothing fixated on one body part rather than considering your silhouette is a recipe for disappointment. This hot-spot body insecurity is just one more way that we women can be self-defeating when it comes to making good fashion judgments. Not anymore.

For now, I'll ask you to suspend all of what you think you know about the shape of your body. I don't know about you, but I've never found it particularly instructive to think about my body as a piece of fruit or as a geometry exercise. For now, please forget about every hinky chart or graph you've ever followed, along with every inane so-called figure fixer tip you've learned since high school, and shift this to a completely spatial perspective. I'll ask you to look at yourself straight on (in a bra and panties, please) in a full-length mirror and absorb this: you are your frame your silhouette first. Your individual measurements, which refine your fit, come second.

Coco Chanel said it well: "Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions." Like architecture, we are looking at your natural frame. Your size may go up and down in your life but your frame is constant. When I have an initial fitting with a client, I first look at the shape of her torso facing me straight on. So, let's now focus on the shape of your torso. Visualize a dress form: shoulders to hips (not by coincidence the very tool that fashion designers use when they create clothing silhouettes). Designers have to conceive the shapes the silhouettes before they consider how a woman's individual measurements will factor into the equation. It is your torso silhouette that will basically determine the line and the clothing shapes that are best for your body. Although we all hold weight differently and have different sized breasts, in general I've encountered the same three combinations of torso proportions that illustrate our first three body types: A, B, and C. Body types D, E, and F have the same basic proportions as A, B, and C but represent plus-sized bodies. Here's how to find your body type.

• Is the width of your shoulders and torso smaller than the width of your hips? You are a Type A.

• Are your shoulders and your hips roughly the same width, with a defined waist? You are a Type B.

• Is the width of your shoulders the same or wider than the width of your hips with little definition at your waist? You are a Type C.

Remember that body types D, E, and F represent women who are fuller variations on A, B, and C. Body type D is a voluptuous, full-fashion version of body type A, E of B, and F of C. Your body type as defined by your torso silhouette is the very best initial determination of your most flattering shapes and body line, at any size. You can be a size 8 body type B or a size 14W body type E and many of the clothing shapes, focal points, and balance recommendations will be the same for both and the best route to finding your most flattering looks.

Copyright © 2004 Kendall Farr

About the Author

Kendall Farr is a fashion stylist and a former fashion editor whose work has appeared in numerous publications from InStyle and People to editions of Harper's Bazaar, Elle, and Marie Claire. She has dressed a number of celebrities including Sigourney Weaver and Diane Sawyer. Her work has appeared in ad campaigns and commercials for fashion and beauty clients including Revlon and Almay, among many others, and she has styled the clothing catalogues of upscale retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.