Tailoring for Women

You may have caught the compelling TV series “Madmen“.  The story of the how the advertising industry took fire on Madisson Avenue in the 60′s.  (30 years earlier the father of PR, Edward Bernays had started the ball rolling by helping the tobacco industry sell cigarettes to women with the somewhat questionable byline ‘A Torch for Liberty’!).  In one episode an eager young secretary was given this down to earth advice from one of her more seasoned colleagues with regards to dressing in the work place.”Go home, cut 2 holes in a paper bag, put it over your head, stand in front of a mirror and take a good look at your at yourself”.  A novel way indeed to assess your body line, but also one that is not too far off the mark.  The first step in deciding how to dress is to get an accurate understanding of your own unique body shape and how to accommodate its proportions.

I can sense that for some this may be something that requires a little courage, but to help you, here is a method that you might find more effective than the ‘paper bag’ solution.
You will need:

• a digital camera
• a printer
• a marker pen
• some tracing paper or similar

Over your usual foundation garments put on a leotord or some similar  body-hugging garment.  Using the self portrait setting on your camera,  take full length pictures of yourself from two aspects; the front and the side.   Print these out in full on A4 paper.  With the pen and  tracing paper copy the outline of your body, then mark in the top of your head, shoulder line, bustline, waistline, hip line, knees, elbows and wrists.

An alternative methoed for perhaps the more creatively inclined I learned from the artist Kristin Newton who has her students stand in front of a mirror looking at their reflected image through a sheet of perspex held a short distance from their face; it is important to view it with just one eye open in order not to distort the perspective.  Then trace around the outline of your body’s image in the mirror directly on to the perspex with a marker.

Before we go to the next stage however, let’s take a step back into antiquity and look at how  proportion was perceived by  the old Masters using the system known as the Golden Section, or the Golden Ratio.  This is a special mathematical relationship whereby a line, divided into two parts (a, b) has a relationship between the whole and its parts so that the ratio between the small section (b) to the larger section (a) is equal to the ratio between the larger section and the whole i.e. a:b = (a+b):a.

This image showing how the Golden Section was applied is from a study carried out at the Virginia Wesleyian College into Bottecelli’s Birth of Venus.

You can see how ‘perfection’ was perceived as a matter or proportion.  The reality is that few of us conform to this sylph-like ideal, however what we aspire to when selecting the style of a garment is to give the illusion of a well balanced proportion.

Now, using both tracings and photographs, take note of  the areas where the body mass is most emphasised.  Compare how the shape of the silhoutte changes between the bust, waist and hip.  Notice the degree of definition of the waist, small of the back, hips and bottom. The reason for using both tracings is that you may find, for example, from the front aspect you appear full and round, whereas from the side you may have a flatter silhouette.

The way in which we can start to balance out our proportions is by using two separate systems of analysis.  A Body Type template (you will need a pdf viewer to access this file) which associates one’s proportions with suggestions for silhouette, fabrics, details and patterns, and a set of supplementary modifications I have called Qualifiers which help with the vertical and horizontal rebalancing.

With statistics showing that most women wear 20% of their wardrobe 80% of the time,  perhaps with a little more knowledge in how to select for proportion, these statistics can be encouraged to change.  Fashion is one thing, the bodies we were graced with is another!

Initial Image: thanks to Guardian/BBC/AMC

Colour analysis is something that came into vogue in the 1980′s with the publishing of two books, one by Carole Jackson (Color me Beautiful) and the other, with a confusingly similar title (“Color me Beautiful’s” Looking your Best) by Mary Spillane. They rely on the theory known as ‘simultaneous contrast’ that was first propounded by the chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul in the 19th century when he noticed how colours, when placed in combination, will influence the way in which they are perceived.

So for instance in this example, the grey rectangle in the upper section appears to be lighter than that in the lower, although they are in reality the same.

The system you are most likely to come into contact with is that of Mary Spillane’s  Colour Me Beautiful organisation (CMB) which is now a global concern and operates through a number of franchises.  Others you may come across are the Wright System by Angela Wright,  and that developed by Barbara Jacques for her Academy of Colour and Style.

The CMB system, which accomodates all ethnic types, analyses a client from a colour palette that is divided  into four separate ‘seasons’: winter palettes are bright, cool and contrasting; spring palettes are predominantly tints that are warm and clear; summer palettes are tonal, cool and muted; and autumn palettes are mostly warm and rich shades. All are based on the three dimensions of colour: hue, saturation and value.  These are co-ordinated with the natural colouring of your hair, skin and eyes in order to determine which colours of clothes and make-up are most complimentary.  This is not to say that there are inherently good or bad colours, it is more a matter of emphasis in that some colours look well when matched with the right person and less impactful on the wrong person.

There are two important considerations in deciding whether you should wear warm or cool shades. The first is your complexion. Skin tone is a combination of melanin, keratin, and haemoglobin. It is melanin which gives the skin its brown tones; keratin gives the yellow tones, and haemoglobin gives the red tones.

The second most important consideration is the intensity or saturation of each colour in a range. Some people respond better to strongly contrasting and vivid colours, while others seem to be dominated by them.  A simple solution to this is to wear softer shades with subtle patterns that place an emphasis on face and personality. In most cases however people can play safe by wearing a garment which is of medium colour value.

Once you have established your basic colour palette you may well be able to reach over into tones from other other ‘seasons’, but first you need to establish your primary ‘season’ and how it works with your complexion.

This is a subtle but extremely effective fundamental for the way in which you start to build your wardrobe and a number of ‘colourists’ I have worked with in the past are still active with their corporate clients despite the downturn.  Here is an interesting, practical and simple standby that I picked up from them and it is that in a pinch, the correctly matched shade of lipstick alone can make a dramatic change in lifting your appearance.