Monica’s excited to learn how to analyze her favorite outfit. She loves clothes shopping and her closet reflects that. However, she has two problems. First, she doesn’t wear all of the clothes in her closet. There are only a few she loves to wear. Second, when she goes shopping it takes a lot of time because she has to try on a lot of clothes to find the few that could work for her. She’s a busy entrepreneur and doesn’t have the time to shop like she used to.
Monica knows clothes change how she feels, especially color. Whenever she wears her favorite colors in large prints she has more energy. She has many balls in the air and needs that extra energy.
Let’s learn how to analyze Monica’s favorite outfit.
Monica’s Body Elements
Over the past 6 blog posts, Monica learned the clues her Body Elements give her when determining which design lines and colors enhance her natural beauty and help her tap into her confidence and personal power. By understanding these clues her perspective on clothes has totally changed. Her Body Element clues are:
- Body Shape — O (Body Shape — The Girls)
- Angular clothes silhouette
- Avoid placing horizontal lines at the waist
- Avoid placing vertical lines at the shoulders
- Face Shape — Pear (Face Shape — The Girls)
- Curved design lines, prints and accessories
- Color Skin, Hair, Eyes — Medium Color Contrast (Color Skin, Hair & Eyes — The Girls)
- Favorite Colors — Green, Yellow and Red/Orange
- Color Combinations (other colors) — Analogous
- Color Combinations (relative lightness and darkness) — Medium contrast
- First Scale Clue — Medium
- Body Proportions — Long between bust/waist, Long between waist/crotch, Short between crotch/knees, Short between knees/floor (Body Proportions — The Girls)
- Horizontal lines — Don’t place them between her crotch/knees and knees/floor but she can place them between her bust and crotch. However, because she has an O Body Shape she needs to avoid them at her waist
- Vertical lines — Limit them between her bust/crotch but do place them between her crotch/floor
- Second Scale Clue — Increase overall scale between bust/crotch and decrease it between crotch/floor
- Body Frame Size — Medium (Body Frame Size — The Girls)
- Third scale clue — Large
- Scale Strategy — Medium/Large (Scale Strategy — The Girls)
- Increase to large between her bust/crotch
- Decrease to medium between her crotch/floor
Analyze Favorite Outfit -- Favorite Outfit
Like Sam, Monica’s favorite outfit is a top pant combination. All of her life she’s been drawn to bright colors with big bold prints, which reflect her bubbly outgoing personality. She’s always been the life of the party and fun to be around. Monica’s a brand and social media expert and runs her own media company. It’s a small company with 5 employees. She works with small to medium/small companies helping them brand themselves on all the social media platforms.
Monica’s clothes need to be comfortable and professional because she meets with clients and helps with the filming and editing of videos to be used in her clients’ social media campaigns. She works long hours so the bright colors help keep her energized. Her clothes also need to reflect that she thinks outside the box helping her clients be seen on all the social media platforms.
Analyze Favorite Outfit -- Top
Monica loves wearing this top. She wears it whenever she’s meeting with a new client. She feels balanced in it and is able to give more of herself for some reason. The colors make her happy even though the green in it is outside what she normally wears.
She likes wearing long sleeves because she feels more professional when wearing them.
Analyze Favorite Outfits -- Design Lines & Colors
There are so many great things about this top. For example, the placement of horizontal lines is perfect. The one at the shoulders helps this area to look wider, balancing out her waist area. The hem creates the other horizontal line at the hip area helping make the hips appear wider, which also brings balance with Monica’s waist. Both horizontal lines also make her long torso appear shorter, creating balance with her shorter legs.
The neckline is curved, which is perfect for her pear Face Shape. The blouse has an angular silhouette, which matches her Body Shape silhouette.
Monica’s favorite color is red/orange, which is the background of the print with red and yellow/green lines. The red is right next to her red/orange and is also slightly darker. The yellow/green is one leg of a triadic color scheme. This is a little out of her ideal monochromatic color scheme. If the red had been blue/violet the blouse would not work as well for her.
The overall shape of the print is curved, which is also perfect for her curved Face Shape.
The design lines and colors work well with her Body Elements.
Analyze Favorite Outfits -- Pants
Monica’s favorite pants are a charcoal gray trouser. These pants fit her well but are still a little baggy in the hip area. They’re easy to move in and for some reason her legs and torso look more balanced. She loves the pockets and she’s always putting her phone in them because she needs it close by. If she were to find more of them, she’d buy them in every color.
Monica has tried to duplicate these pants but has had a difficult time. She tried finding them with the same manufacturer/designer but none of them fit the same way. When pants fit around her waist, the hips are always too big, and the length of the pants is always too long. For some reason this pair of pants fits her the best and as a result she wears them a lot.
Analyze Favorite Outfit -- Design Line & Color Analysis
Monica’s Body Shape makes finding pants in the ready-to-wear world difficult because her waist is wider than her hips. Manufacturers/designers design pants with the waist circumference smaller than the hip circumference. There are two things she can do to create the perfect fitting pair of pants: get alterations or have them custom made.
The reasons why her legs and torso appear to be balanced is because the pant legs themselves along with the center front and back crease lines create vertical lines. As a result her legs appear longer. Pairing the vertical lines from the pants and the horizontal lines from the top make the whole outfit and Monica’s torso and legs appear more balanced.
The other problem Monica has with most pairs of pants is the length: they’re always too long. This pair of pants might’ve been an ankle pant. On her shorter legs they look full length. It drives her crazy that she always has to shorten pants. One thing she needs to consider is that there are a lot of women with longer legs than hers and it’s much easier to shorten length than to add it. Removing length is an easy alteration to have done and the cost is worth it.
The charcoal color of the pants is a great neutral for Monica. She can also wear black and darker colors of tan. Because Monica loves color she can consider getting pants in her favorite colors.
Summary
Top
Next time when Monica is shopping she should look for tops with a horizontal line between her chin and bust. There are several ways she can do this. Here are some examples:
Also Monica can look for tops with pleats, pockets or dropped shoulders to create width at the shoulders. These are a few examples:
(Macys.com: Alfani Pleated Long Sleeve Top, Web ID: 12235879; Calvin Klein Floral Print Utility Shirt; Alfani Asymmetrical Drape Neck Top, Web ID: 12658516)
Pants
Pants will always be hard for Monica because of her Body Shape. She needs to find the manufacturers that fit her body the best and have them altered for better fit. The same goes for shortening the pants for her shorter legs.
Monica has to remember that these alterations don’t reflect who she is as a person and many women have the same issues. Finding pants that fit perfectly can be hard for many women. She needs to remember that women come in different shapes and sizes and all those curves are hard to fit with a pair of pants.
Final Thoughts
The fashion industry doesn’t design for women with O, V or A Body Shape. Also they don’t design for short or long legs. Fit will always be hard for Monica. In many cases she’ll need to have her clothes altered to fit her body.
Another alternative for Monica is to have her clothes custom made for her body. This way she can call her tailor/seamstress, tell her/him what she wants and they’ll create it. Yes, it costs more but in the long run she buys exactly what she wants in the colors, prints and styles that help her have the energy needed to run her business. Yes, it costs more but the cost per wearing goes down when she frequently wears them.
Next week Alice is up to learn how to analyze her favorite outfit. It’s called: Analyze Favorite Outfit — Alice.
Wear Your Greatness!!
