← The Everyday Style School
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Every day I get emails from companies trying to sell me things with subject lines like the one thing you need to know or the one piece your wardrobe needs, or my personal favorite, the one thing that changes everything. I see that one a lot actually. These phrases are overused, hyperbolic, and let's face it, AI generated. The truth is, success in anything is rarely the result of just one thing. But if I did use the phrase the one thing that changes everything, I'd use it when talking about proportion. It is that important and it's what we're talking about today. So let's get started. Hello gorgeous. Welcome back to the Everyday Style School, the show that teaches you everything your mom never did about getting dressed. I'm your host, Jennifer Mackie. Mary, after 25 years of dressing real women with real bodies, real budgets and real lives, I know great style isn't about following one size fits all advice. It's about learning what works for you. Friends, I am so excited for today's topic. I don't know a ton of people who geek out when they get to talk about proportion, but it is one of my favorite style related subjects. In the first episode of the season, I told you that proportion is what I am best at. I'm not the most fashion forward style expert in the world. I never claim to be, I don't want to be. But what I am good at is understanding how to make clothes look good on women. And. And I would argue that for the vast majority of women shopping at the Gap instead of Gucci, that is a much more important skill. And I say skill because understanding proportion isn't a genetic gift I was born with. It's something that I learned and practiced and applied. And that my friend, is good news. Because if I can learn it, it means you can learn it too. Today we're going to talk about what proportion really means. Where most women get it wrong. The two areas proportion matters when it comes to your style. And of course I'm going to leave you with some homework. If you don't do any other Everyday Style School homework, you don't want to skip this one. Because if you struggle with feeling like you don't look good in your clothes or your outfits don't quite come together, it probably starts with proportion. It might actually be the one thing that changes everything. And as we've already established, I don't take that phrase lightly. But before we get into proportion, I want to talk about a fundamental truth that you may have never even considered. And that is style is all about relationships. Think about it. Whether or not a color pairing looks good together is about the relationship between the three color elements that we talked about last episode. Neither color on its own is good or bad, but does the relationship work? It's the same with colors that look good on you. My light coloring isn't bad, and dark Navy isn't bad. I really like dark Navy, but the relationship between my coloring and that shade of navy isn't the best. When you ask, how do these jeans look on me? What you're really asking is, is the relationship between the jeans and your rear end a good one? And when you stand in front of the mirror doing that little flamingo thing that we all do to see which shoes you should wear with your outfit, you're deciding which relationship between clothes and shoes produces the better outfit. When it comes to style, I can't think of a single thing that is inherently good or bad. What determines if something works or not comes down to the relationship. The relationship between that thing in your body, that thing and the other things you're wearing with it, or that thing and your specific needs. The sooner you embrace the idea of relationships and start looking at how things are connected versus just the things in isolation, the easier style will be. And proportion is the most fundamental style relationship there is. So let's talk about it. The first thing you need to know is what proportion really means. We might think about our proportions when thinking about our body shapes or our measurements. Or we might say the proportions are off when we know that an outfit doesn't quite work, but we don't really know why. But when you understand what the word itself really means, it's a lot easier to understand the concept of proportion and how to apply it and to your body and your outfits. So here is the Cambridge Dictionary definition. Proportion is, number one, a part or share of the whole, or number two, the relationship between one thing and another in size, amount, or degree. No matter which definition you prefer, they're both based on the idea of connection and interrelatedness and, and relationship. And maybe you're thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, Jen, I get it. Move on. And if you do, that's great. I. I hope that you truly embrace this idea. But this is one of those things that I think women might conceptually understand, but when it comes time to put it into practice, we often forget that whole idea of relationship and connectedness and parts of a whole. It just goes out the window. So I want to give you just a couple of quick examples to illustrate my point. The first one is this one thing I have heard often in my long and storied career is women saying, I used to be an hourglass, but now I'm an apple. And I'd always say, huh, okay, tell me more about that. And they would explain that when they were younger, before kids, before perimenopause, whatever, they had a small waist but now were thicker in the middle. Okay, that happens. That's life. But here's the thing. An hourglass body shape is not about having a certain size waist. It's not about being a 0 or a 2 or a 4. An hourglass shape has a waist that is smaller than. Than being the key word. Their bust and their hips, and that is proportion, the relationship between one thing and another in size or degree. So I would say to these women, well, do you still get the gap in the back of your pants? And they'd almost always say, yes. And then I would ask, is it still hard to find button front shirts that fit well in the body without gapping at the bust? And again, they would usually say, yes. And here's why. Because their bust and their hips were still bigger than. There's that word again, their waist. So, yes, their midsection was fuller than it used to be. They wore a bigger size than they used to. They may have more of a tummy than they used to have, but it didn't fundamentally change their shape because the proportions were still that of an hourglass. Example number two is a question that drives me more crazy than just about any other, and that is, can a fill in the blank body shape wear a fill in the blank clothing item, like can an apple wear a striped sweater? And my Style Circle members will tell you my first question back to them when they ask this is always, how are you going to wear it? Or what are you going to wear it with? Because again, it's not just about the pattern or just about the top. It's about how all the pieces of the outfit work together and how that specific combination of pieces works with your body shape. Looking at things in isolation causes a few problems. First, fixing one thing often causes other issues. For example, my hourglasses, who thought they had morphed into apples because of their bigger waistlines, would start dressing like apples. And then all of a sudden, they were complaining because they felt shapeless and boxy, which are their words, not mine. Second, when it comes to the can this body shape wear that item of clothing issue, we often assume that all things are created equal. So we think all striped tops are going to work for us, or no striped Tops are going to work for us when the reality is that a hip length top with like skinny micro stripes is. Is going to look very different than a cropped rugby striped top. Looking at things in isolation is also the reason that you can have a closet full of pieces that on their own are great, but you can't make outfits that you like or that you feel good in. So hopefully at this point, you realize that you have to look at your body parts and the pieces of your outfits as parts of a whole, rather than a collection of unrelated elements. And until you do, that, style will always be difficult. And frankly, I could just stop there. If you walked away from this episode with just that perspective, you would be better off than you were 10 minutes ago. But, you know, I've got more to say. I always do. Because understanding proportions or parts of the whole is just the first step. Knowing what to do with that information is where the magic happens. And the magic is this. Once you understand how the parts relate to each other, you can manipulate those relationships to create balance, which is ultimately the goal. And what do we use to manipulate proportions and create balance? Clothes. Clothes are the tool. But in order to use clothes to create balance, you first need to understand proportions in two key areas, your body and your outfits. Let's start with your body, and we're going to break it down even further because there are two sets of proportions you need to consider. Your horizontal proportions and your vertical proportions. Your horizontal proportions are what we commonly call your body shape. This is your apple, pear, hourglass, inverted triangle, whatever you want to call it, I know you know what I'm talking about. We talk about them all the time. This set of proportions is the relationship between your bust, waist, and hips, or as I look at it, your bust and shoulders, your waist and your hips. And we're not going to spend a lot of time here today because our next episode coming up soon is all about understanding your body shape. And I've got other things that I want to spend time on today, but here's what I want to highlight in this conversation. First, your body shape is not one measurement. We talked about that already. But it is worth mentioning again because it's where women get tripped up the most. I have worked with so many women who spent years dressing the wrong body shape because they focused on just one body part. One of my favorite clients, hey girl, came to me after another stylist told her that she was an apple because she has a tummy. But when I looked at her and I looked at her photos, her top half is noticeably smaller than her bottom half. So she is not an apple at all. She was led down the wrong path. Once we looked at the whole picture, AKA her proportions, it was much easier for her to find clothes that fit and flattered and made her feel good. The second thing I want you to know about horizontal proportions is this. Bodies look best when they have symmetrical balance. Which means things are roughly the same on the top half and the bottom half. In the next episode, we're going to be ditching these body shape labels. But today I want to keep it easy, so I'm just going to use them. Two of the four basic body shapes have horizontal balance. That's your rectangles and your hourglasses. Their upper bodies are the same as their lower bodies. Their goal is to maintain balance. The other two, our apples and our pears, don't have horizontal balance. So their goal is to create that balance. And I know that you would love me to share exactly how to do that, but we have an entire class dedicated to using clothes and the elements of clothing to dress your body. And it is way more than I can cover in 30 minutes. That class is the absolute defense Deep dive. But the takeaway here is that the first goal when dressing your horizontal proportions is to either create or maintain balance. So now let's talk about vertical proportions or vertical body shape. First of all, if you're not familiar with it, what are we talking about here? This is the relationship between your torso length and your leg length. There are no fruity, cutesy labels here. We just describe it, right? So you can have long legs and a short torso, short legs and a long torso, or you can be balanced, meaning the two measurements are roughly the same. Vertical body shape doesn't get nearly the attention that horizontal body shape does. It is the most overlooked proportion in bodies. But honestly, I think it is just as important. This year, I put together a vertical body shape class for our Style Circle members and I got so much feedback saying that this was the thing that finally made dressing their bodies make sense. Like it. They did all the right things before, but this was like the missing piece that they hadn't really focused on. Vertical body shape is another reason that those wear this, don't wear that list just aren't helpful. But they don't take these super important proportions into account at all. So what looks good on a rectangle with short torso and long legs is going to be very different than what looks good on a rectangle with a long torso and short legs. Clothes fit different. It's almost like dressing a completely different body. So if you have memorized all the rules and you've bought all the right things and you're still like, I, I don't know, it just doesn't work for me. This could be why. And now, my friend, I'm going to blow your mind. Are you ready? This is what you came for. Short waisted is not the same thing as having a short torso. Let that sink in for a second. Let it marinate. I will say it again. Having a short waist is not the same thing as having a short torso. I'll be honest, I don't see anybody else talking about this. Most things that you see online use the terms interchangeably, but they are not the same at all. Let me explain. A short torso is about the length of your actual torso in relation to the length of your legs. Right? So we're talking about basically your shoulders to about the hinge of your hip. Okay, that makes sense, right? Versus your leg length. That is your torso and leg length. Okay, stick with me. A short waist, or as I like to call it instead, a high waist, is about the placement of your waist, your smallest part on your torso. It is a separate proportion. These proportions can go together. In fact, they usually do. If you have a short torso, you will often have a short or a high waist. And because there just isn't the real estate available to have a really balanced waist or even a long waist. But you can absolutely have a long torso and a short waist. How do I know? Well, I have seen it hundreds of times and also I have lived it every day of my life, so I know this to be true. Now here's the kicker. When your waist is high or short, however you want to call it, it visually makes the lower part of your torso more prominent. Again, there's just more real estate which can give you a slightly bottom heavy look or put emphasis on your tummy. And I know that is not great news for a lot of women, but at least it explains why it's happening. You're not crazy and it's a real thing. And I just, I wonder how many women listening right now have labeled themselves as a pair of when really they're just a high waisted hourglass. Again, if the labels don't quite fit, it's often because of nuance like this that you can't get when you just give people 4 or 6 or even 12 basic body shape categories. The vertical body shape class that I created covers both how to create balance between the length of your torso and the length of your legs and also how to create that balance on your torso if your proportions don't match up like mine don't. Like I said, this is the missing piece for a lot of women who have struggled to dress their bodies, even though they're doing and buying all the right things. It's just that horizontal body shape doesn't tell the whole story. You need to understand vertical body shape, too. Again, it's the relationship and getting the whole picture. But now we're going to pivot a little bit and we're going to move on and talk about proportions in your outfits. And we're going to highlight just two things, length and volume. First, though, let's talk about balance goals. When it comes to your outfits, bodies look best both horizontally and vertically. When the balance is symmetrical. Right? Meaning your upper body and lower body look roughly the same and your torso length and leg length look roughly the same. I say roughly because we don't need measuring tapes and calculators. But just look, the goal is to get them pretty much equal, right? Okay. That's not the case with outfits, though. Outfits look best and balanced when the parts work together, but they're not exactly equal. Think about it this way. When you go out to dinner or you cook a meal, a well balanced dish or well balanced plate doesn't mean there's exactly the same amount of every ingredient, right? It's about knowing the right proportions of each ingredient or component to get the result that you want. Now that you understand that, let's move on to lengthen your outfits. And by this, I mean where your outfit divides visually. This can be the length of your top versus the length of your bottoms or where the waistline or belt on a dress falls. This is vertical outfit proportions. To understand how to create good balance vertically, we're going to use a principle made popular by fashion icons like the Greek mathematician Euclid and our good friend Leonardo da Vinci. And that is the golden ratio, which you might be familiar with or not. If you're not. This is a principle that says that in nature and art and design and outfits. Euclid didn't say outfits. I added that things are most aesthetically pleasing when they are divided into thirds instead of halves, with one part of something taking up 2/3 of the space and another part taking up 1/3. Now, the golden ratio isn't exactly thirds, but this is a show about clothes, not math. So just roll with it. An example of this would be a cropped jacket with high rise full length pants. The pants make up 2/3 of the visual length of the outfit and the jacket takes up one third. Now contrast that image in your head with ankle length pants and a jacket that hits low at the top of the hip or even lower. That's an example of dividing your outfit into halves. And it doesn't look as polished or as dynamic and it can look a little frumpy. This is why a long sweater with a midi skirt doesn't work as well as a short sweater with a midi skirt. Years and years ago, my daughters and I were getting ready to go to a Taylor Swift concert. I think it was actually a reputation tour. And my older one, who was probably in fifth grade at the time, was putting her outfit together. She had this cute little flannel and lace shirt that she was wearing kind of open over a tank and she was pairing it with denim shorts. It was very cute. She had started with long, almost bermuda length shorts and she didn't like the way it looked and she was getting kind of mad. Then she tried on short denim shorts that had maybe like a 3 or 4 inch inseam and she all of a sudden loved it. She said, I don't know why, but the other shorts looked country. These look cute. Now, I don't know what looking country is, but clearly she didn't like it. That was not one of her style guide posts. But the important thing to remember here is she naturally stumbled onto the golden ratio in her outfit. Her top was a little bit longer, so it looked better with shorts that were shorter. That was a very, very proud mama moment and I'm just, I'm glad I got to share it with you. This ratio happens all the time in style, whether we realize it or not. I don't know if you've noticed over the last decade or so, but skirts got longer, pant rises got higher, and tops got shorter. It all works together. Now we are seeing more mid and low rise bottoms. We're seeing shorter skirts and I have noticed that tops are getting longer too. The shift hasn't totally happened yet and it might take a very long time for the dominant proportion to completely change. So you don't need to start worrying about, are my short tops and higher rise bottoms out of style? That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just saying that things shift together for a reason. So keep an eye out for that. Let's move on to volume distribution. If length is how much each piece in your outfit takes up vertically, volume is how much each piece takes up in your outfit horizontally and because we're talking about outfit balance. You already know that things look best and balanced when they're not perfectly equal. Remember that. So what does that mean for volume? It simply means that outfits look best when there's more volume in one area than the other. It's a relaxed top with more fitted pants or a fitted sweater with a more voluminous skirt. There are a couple of key mistakes women tend to make when it comes to volume distribution. And the first one is too much volume all over. Like a baggy top with baggy jeans. Now this, it is a look. It is a look that has been a thing with fashiony types and street style and 20 year olds for a few years. But I will tell you that this is really, really tough to pull off in real life and not look sloppy. If this is a look that you think you want to do, I really encourage you to do just a Google image search. Just go to your Google machine and type in baggy top, baggy jeans outfits, women, and hit enter. See which outfits you think look best and pay attention to how they're being styled. Are the tops even though they're baggy, cropped or tucked in, that is the wearer trying to rein in some of the volume somewhere. If you like the way baggy with baggy looks, try it in your own closet. Again though, just a warning. Unless you are doing it super intentionally and following through with the styling, this is a tough one. It's one that women do unconsciously all the time. So if you're thinking, is she talking to me? I don't know. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. Just go to a mirror and look. Okay? The other mistake women make with volume is thinking in the extremes. So when I say volume in one place and not the other, they think they have to have like a bodycon top paired with a ball gown skirt. That is not it at all. It just means if you're wearing one piece that's oversized, baggy, voluminous, relaxed, you should reign in the volume somewhere else in your outfit. So instead of an oversized sweater with palazzo jeans, pair the oversized sweater with straight leg jeans instead. Doesn't mean that you have to wear like Old Navy rockstar skinnies that you have to lay down and, you know, suck in a breath to get them on. That's not what I'm talking about. We don't have to go to extremes. And also, if you are wearing a piece that's really, really fitted, give your outfit the balance that it wants and needs by wearing something else that's a little bit relaxed. When it comes to length and volume, there is a ton of intersection, which gives us outfit formulas like long over lean. Maybe you've heard of this, maybe you haven't. This is the legging and tunic combo we lived in for years. Or a long top with skinny jeans. Long is about length, while lean is about volume. But they work hand in hand to create an outfit that makes sense to the eye. Wide leg pants with shorter tops is the same thing. You've got the volume on the bottom and the shorter length on the top. Both of these formulas use both length and volume to create outfits that look balanced and not overwhelming. And the best way to look at it is that in a way, you can use length to control the appearance of volume. They're not a perfect substitute for each other, but there's definitely crossover. And in fact, there is crossover between the tools, right? Remember that. The clothes that we use to manipulate our body proportions and the tools we use to create aesthetically pleasing outfits. And I will give you an example from my own life. Vertically, my body is imbalanced. I have a long torso and shorter legs. So I use clothes to manipulate those proportions to make my legs look longer and my torso look shorter. And the outfit formula I use, shorter tops, higher rise pants creates that golden ratio automatically. So it does two things. Now, I could wear long tops and ankle pants to get that 2/3, 1/3 outfit ratio, which would still be a good outfit, but it would highlight my longer torso and make my legs look even shorter, which is not what I'm going for. On the other hand, sometimes our goals are in conflict with each other. For instance, my horizontal body shape is also imbalanced. I got all the imbalance going on, right? My top half is bigger than my bottom half for that issue. Conventional wisdom says that I should wear longer tops and not have any lines cutting across my midsection, which would then make my top look bigger. And all of that is true, but completely at odds with what balances my vertical body shape. Like I just shared with you, I can't balance both perfectly at the same time. With the short top high rise pant combo, I have to choose which one is more important to me or use other clothing elements besides line placement to to balance my horizontal body shape and look. That is just reality. You won't always be able to balance everything perfectly all at once. But once you understand the relationship between the parts of your body, the pieces of your outfit, and how they all work together, you can make intentional choices. Knowing what those tools, those Clothes are going to do for you. And that, my friend, takes a ton of guesswork out of looking good. Okay, we covered a lot today, so let's quickly recap and then get to the all important homework. Here are three things I want you to take away from this episode. Number one, style is all about relationships and proportion. Meaning the relationship between one thing and another in size, amount, or degree or as parts of a whole is the most fundamental style relationship there is. Number two, the two big body proportions you need to understand are your horizontal proportions and your vertical proportions. The two big outfit proportions to know are length and volume distribution. Finally, number three, once you understand your proportions and outfit proportions, you can use clothing to manipulate the relationships between the different parts of your body and pieces of your outfit to create visual balance. That's really all dressing your body is. By the way, I hate to let you in on that little secret so early. Okay, here's your homework. I'm telling you it's important. And actually it's so important that I have two things for you to do. First, I want you to look at your body's proportions. Don't worry about finding the right label. Don't bust out a tape measure. I just want you to see if you can determine your body's horizontal and vertical proportions. I want you to use the words than T, H, a N, or same as, for example, my top half is bigger than my bottom half or my leg length is the same as my torso length. You don't have to get it perfect. Just get it started. Then, as you are getting dressed this week, pay attention to your outfit's proportions, both in length and volume. If you're feeling extra. If you want to do a little extra work, try to put together a golden outfit ratio. Try one third on the top, 2/3 on the bottom, and then flip it and see which one you like better. Or just play with mixing up the volume in your outfits and see where you like volume best on your body. Then, as you're getting dressed this week, pay attention to your outfit's proportions, both in length and volume. If you're feeling extra, try to put together a golden ratio outfit or try mixing up the volume in your outfits, but at least start to recognize the patterns that you're already doing. I really, really hope this episode encourages you to stop thinking of style as unrelated pieces or measurements and start looking at the whole picture. That is truly the perspective that changes everything. All right, that is it for this episode of the Everyday Style School. Thank you for spending time with me today. If you are ready to make style easier and more fun, come join me in the Style Circle. It is where you will get all of our classes, including the deep dives on horizontal and vertical body shapes, as well as capsule guides and style tools and all the support you need to actually use them. You can become a member today at your everyday style dot com. I will see you next time and until then, stay stylish.