The Answer to Whether Stripes Make You Look Wider

Women often avoid striped clothing because they think that it can visually distort the proportions of their bodies. It’s true that wearing stripes can alter the way your body looks, but this doesn’t have to be a negative thing. In reality, you can use this print to emphasize the strong points of your silhouette.

5-Minute Crafts would like to help you figure out how to wear striped clothing to your benefit.

The effects of striped clothing

• Horizontal or vertical stripes?
  Scientists have come to the conclusion that vertical stripes make you look taller and slimmer, and horizontal stripes make you look wider. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t wear clothing with horizontal stripes at all (after all, very few people want to look a few inches wider or a few pounds heavier). A horizontal striped pattern helps highlight your curves and make your waist look thinner.
  
  Vertical stripes are a good choice for long or tight clothes. They will make your silhouette or its individual parts look slimmer and taller (for example, striped trousers can make your legs visually longer).

• Narrow or wide stripes?
  Narrow stripes look sleeker and more elegant. It’s these that help you look slimmer while wide stripes give you volume. Use the striped pattern wisely to emphasize and visually enlarge some parts of the body while making other parts less visible.

• What about diagonal stripes?
  Diagonal stripes, created by a pattern or cutout, visually reduce the area of your body where they’re located. This feature can be used to highlight the waist or neckline. If you combine a top with diagonal stripes and a dark bottom, the top will look bulkier. This trick can be useful for women who want to make their busts visually bigger or hips visually narrower.
  

• What about stripes of different widths?
  A smooth increase in the width of the stripes can visually stretch the figure. That being said, the place where the stripes are more frequent looks thinner.

How to wear striped clothing according to your body type

• Pear body type
  If your shoulders are narrower than your hips, choose thick stripes for the upper part of your body and thin vertical stripes for the bottom half. This pattern will visually balance the figure, make the shoulders look a little wider, and the hips look slimmer.

• Apple body type
  In an apple-shaped figure, the main weight is concentrated in the midsection. Use vertical stripes to make the silhouette visually longer and diagonal ones to divert attention from the tummy.
  Choose narrow stripes of dark colors or stripes with a solid-colored border at the sides — they will make your figure visually slimmer.

• Rectangle body type
  Women with a rectangle body type have a tall and thin boyish frame. If you want to add curves to your body, opt for clothes with thick horizontal stripes in the areas where you want to look curvy. For example, wide stripes around the waist and bust will help create the illusion of an hourglass figure.

• Hourglass body type
  Women with an hourglass figure have a thin waist, wide hips, and a full bust so they can experiment with both vertical and horizontal stripes. Just make sure that all the stripes are going in the same direction and don’t distort the silhouette.

• Petite body type
  If you have a petite body type and want to look taller, opt for clothes with long, vertical stripes. They will create the illusion of height.