Do you know about body types? It’s that thing where you break down your body into a shape — like rectangle, circle, triangle, inverted triangle or hourglass. It’s based on where you carry most of your weight. And it’s designed to make you look better in your clothes.
I’ve been a stylist for 25 years, and I never relied on body types or guidelines to help me get someone dressed. When styling a shoot, if an outfit didn’t look right, I’d figure out how to make the model look better based on a feeling. When something is off, it feels off. Putting together outfits has always come naturally to me.
Real Women With Real Bodies
It wasn’t until I started working with real women that I realized it’s not like this for everyone. Figuring out what looks good doesn’t come naturally to all women.
Real women with real bodies often struggle with their style! And when I started working privately with clients it became clear that there’s this population of successful women who feel inadequate every time they put an outfit together.
“I never got the dressing lessons,” said a client of mine.
So as my focus shifted away from commercial shoots to helping real women look and feel INCREDIBLE in their clothes, I realized that having guidelines around getting dressed could help. That’s when I studied up on the body types.
Click play to watch the video where I share what you need to know about the body type rules. I give examples of what suits certain bodies and what you should do based on your type.
Guidelines To Get Started
Here’s why I think the body type guidelines are useful. If you want to be a painter, staring at the big white canvas could feel intimidating when you don’t know how to paint. This impacts your confidence, and your ability to get started. The canvas stays blank.
Now imagine that instead of a blank canvas, there were a few lines drawn in. This provides a simple outline of the design you’d like to create. Then it doesn’t feel so intimidating to start painting. So you paint some more. And you begin to develop your painting skills which eventually develops your artistry which leads into creating your style.
You may then decide that you don’t want those initial guidelines anymore. Or you may decide that you like how they look so you keep them there.
I don’t use the body type guidelines for myself. My eye is trained to see what to wear, and as I mentioned… I feel when something isn’t right. But when working with clients, I always get their measurements to get a complete picture of their shape. Especially when working virtually, having this information tells me how their weight is distributed and what styles and silhouettes will suit them best. Just because a women wears a size 10 doesn’t mean she’d wear the same styles as another woman wearing the same size. Her proportions could be totally different.
Dressing Body Types Is A Choice
If you’re not sure what looks good, or how to dress, understanding these guidelines may be useful to get you going. Nobody wants to stare at a blank canvas, and not know what to do! As your confidence grows and you train your eye, you find the freedom to take creative liberties. Your style becomes your self expression. That’s when you decide if you want to keep using the guidelines. Or let them go, and do your own thing.
If you’re not sure about what looks good on you, I can show you how to dress your body better in ways you probably never even considered! Book a complimentary call and let’s discuss getting you into the right clothes.
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