The Wardrobe Project: Shop For Your Pear Shape

This simple dress uses color to frame this woman's face and draw the eye upwards.

If you are a pear shape, you have a lovely womanly figure. You are one lucky lady! You get to wear scarves, beautiful big earrings, hats, brooches, and anklets. Your collars can be exploding with ruffles and you get to sport sleeves as puffy and shoulders as padded as you like. Keep in mind one simple rule for dressing: God has already emphasized your bum, so you don't have to. Use your clothes to emphasize everything else.

Use the lines of an outfit and your accessories to draw the eye upwards towards the waist and face (your assets), downwards towards your feet and ankles (more assets), and away from the bum and hips. Some clothing rules of thumb to keep in mind: patterns, textures, spots of color, rosettes and other embellishments draw the eye; muted colors tone down an area.

Dos

This outfit has a lot of pro-pear features.
The hemline has added bulk to balance the bum.
The waist is nicely highlighted.
You would want to take up the sleeves a bit
so that they visually point to the waist and not the hips.
Also, try a bold earring or necklace to draw the eye up.

1. You are the Queen of Accessories! To emphasize your face, your get to use your best and favorite colors, attention grabbing scarves and brooches, patterns in the material, hats, large earrings, jewelry of almost any sort, ruffles, and other details. Your goal is to balance your exciting hips with visual excitement on your upper half. This means you will be accenting your upper body so that your face is the crowning jewel of every outfit!

2. Mute the bum and hips. You will look best if the darker colors and solid colors in your outfit are placed here. Avoid shine or bulk here, so leather and satin are both top options only. The lines of your clothes need to flow seamlessly and visually over you at your widest point, so choose weightier fabrics for your lower half which will allow an item to retain its shape as it flows over your curves. Knits and light weight fabrics will cling and emphasize, so save those fabrics for your tops. End your shirts and jackets above or below your widest spot. You can even wear a tunic, if carefully chosen in a weightier, nonclinging fabric in a neutral color.

3. Emphasize the waist. Pears have a waist! You can belt it, wrap it, and end a jacket here. Wherever there is a break in the outfit, a spot where the item ends or the color pattern changes dramatically, your eye tends to be drawn there. Your waist is a good spot to put a break. Speaking of breaks, be sure to watch your sleeves. When your arms are down, they should end, or break, so that they visually "point" to a lovely spot. If they do end up breaking right at your more voluptuous spots, roll them up! Another tip, when you are getting a dress, see if the waist has slight gathering on either side of the waist. This will be to your advantage as it will make you look slimmer.

 Our lovely model and guest blogger, Maggie
(underage so we are careful with her identity)
demonstrates how to do some of these Dos.

The bright colors jump out and grab your attention.
The scarf adds emphasis to her face making her bust and shoulders more balanced.
Notice her sleeves are rolled up so that they hit her waist level.   

4. Balance the bottom at the bottom. When choosing pants, go for a mid to high rise to lessen the risk of muffin tops and exposing your underwear when sitting, and steer away from a tapered leg. Go for straight legs, boot cut, and flared bottoms as long as you can get them without dragging the hem on the ground. Following these tips will make your legs look long, but they won't draw unwanted attention to your hips. Decorations around the hem and on the leg seams are also very fun. 

Here, the sleeves end where they are just as wide as Maggie's hips, allowing for balance.
The scarf and earrings add emphasis to the face.
Notice, that the dress has gathers around the waist, slimming the waist. 

The structure of this skirt hides an ample bum in the folds
while showing off the waist.

5. Dresses. What better way to dress up than to wear dresses? Here are some tips for making you look just like a queen. The skirt should not end in the middle of the calf; it needs to either be longer or shorter where the calf muscle tapers. Be careful when going shorter! Don't go any shorter than right above the knee, and don't stop at the ankle unless you are wearing boots. Most women look best when the skirt ends just above the knee and when the skirt ends at the floor length. If the skirt is long, Pears can get away with a lots of ruffles around the hem. (This makes us Southern Belles very happy.)    

Ruffled hems!

Accessories will help you draw the eye where you want it!
To draw the eye away from the bum, try a pop of color in your shoe.
To draw it up, think earrings!

The End

1. Be sure the hems of your shirts, jackets, or any items end somewhere other than the middle of your bum. This will make it look bigger and draw the eye there. You will be drawing the eye away from your beautiful face.

2. The most important fit for you is the bum. Purchase your pants and skirts to fit very well through the bum. You can easily alter your waist yourself or spend a few dollars to have a seamstress take in an outfit. Consider alterations a necessary part of your charms and one of the hidden costs of your wardrobe, like dry cleaning (your curvy cousins, the hourglasses, will be doing this, too).

3. A fashion rule of thumb is to never buy anything without trying it on. Skirts can be tricky, because the look changes with different leg shapes. Your fabulous skirt might look mediocre on another Pearl because of this. That's why we try everything on before purchasing! Try to get a back view. If you can, have someone take a digital picture of your back view when you come out of the dressing room so you can see instantly the impression you leave behind in a potential purchase.

So Go Shopping!

Most women have a few shopping habits to break--shopping for the shape they want rather than the shape they have. This leads to frustration and a feeling that "Nothing looks good on me!" It will take awhile to train your eye to spot the gems on the hangar. Don't give up and don't despair! If you keep picking up clothing for another shape, voice out loud who the item was designed for, "This would look fantastic on So-and-so! She's an Apple," then hang it up and move on to an item designed for you.

Nothing breeds success like success. Go have a fun morning with a friend! Take this list, $25, a digital camera, and a friend and hit a quality used clothing store (one that only racks gently used items and sorts women's clothing by size) and search for one complete outfit or one fantastic item. Try on items that follow these rules then analyze what looks good and what does not to find out why you love or hate it. Talk over each item and what it does to add or detract from your graces. Giggle when it looks awful! Remember, if clothing doesn't look good--it's the fault of the clothes, not you! God has blessed you, so go bless yourself with a very good time!

For further tips and updates see my Pinterest Board: Pear Shape Fashion.

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