Jennifer Mackey-Mary: Everyday, I get emails from companies trying to sell 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. 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’s that important–and its what we’re talking about today.  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 Mackey Mary. After 25 years of dressing women with real bodies, budgets, and 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’s one of my favorite style related subjects. In the first episode of the season, I told you that proportion is what I’m best at. I’m not the most fashion forward style expert in the world, I never claimed to be…but what I am good at is understanding how to make clothes look good on women, and I would argue, for the vast majority of women shopping at Gap instead of Gucci, that’s 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, practiced, and applied. And that, my friend, is good news–because if I can learn it, it means you can, 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 style, and of course, I’m going to leave you with some homework, so you can start understanding and practicing proportion too. 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 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 at all. 

Before we get into proportion, I want to talk about a fundamental truth, that you may never have 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 we talked about last episode. Neither color is good or bad, but does the relationship work? Same with colors that look good on you. My light coloring isn’t bad, and dark navy isn’t bad..I quite like dark navy. But the relationship between my coloring and dark navy isn’t the best. “How do these jeans look on me?” is questioning the relationship between the jeans and your rear end. When you stand in front of the mirror, doing that flamingo thing to see which shoes you should wear, 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 and your body. That thing and the other things you’re wearing with it. That thing and your specific needs. The sooner you embrace that idea, and start looking at relationships between the things, vs 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 think about our body shapes or measurements, or we might say “the proportions are off” when we know an outfit doesn’t quite work, but when you understand what the word itself really means, its easier to understand the concept of proportion and how to apply it. 

Here’s the cambridge dictionary definition–proportion is 1-a part or share of the whole, or 2-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 maybe you’re thinking–yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. And if you do, great. But this is one of those things I think women might conceptually understand, but when it comes time to put it into practice, we often forget. Let me give you a couple of examples to illustrate my point.

One thing I have heard often in my long career is women saying “I used to be an hourglass, but now I’m an apple”. And I’d always say, “huh. Tell me more about that”. And they’d explain that when they were younger, before kids, before perimenopause, they had a small waist. But now, they were thicker in the middle. Ok, that happens. But here’s the thing..an hourglass body shape is not about having a certain size waist. An hourglass shape has a waist that is smaller than (than being the key word) their bust and hips. That’s proportion–the relationship between one thing and another in size or degree. So i would say to these women–do you still get the gap in the back of your pants? And usually say yes. And I would ask-is it still hard to find button front shirts that fit well with out gapping at the bust, and they’d usually say yes. Because their bust and 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 had more of a tummy than they used to, but it didn’t fundamentally change their shape, because the proportions were still that of an hourglass.

Example # 2 is a question that drives me more crazy than just about any other, and that is “can a —fill in the body shape–wear a —fill in the clothing item”.Like,  Can an apple wear a striped sweater? And my style circle members will tell you, my first question back is always “how are you going to wear it? What are you going to wear it with?” Because again, it’s not just about the pattern of the top, its 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 morphed into apples because of their bigger waistline would start dressing like apples, and then feel shapeless and boxy–their words not mine.

Second, when it comes to the “can this body shape wear that item of clothing issues”, 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 microstripes is very different than a cropped rugby stripe top. 

It’s also the reason you can have a closet full of pieces that on their own are great, but you can’t make outfits you like, or feel good in. 

Hopefully at this point, you realize 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. Until you do that, style will always be difficult.

Now, I could just stop there. If you walked away from this episode with that perspective, you’d be better off than you were 10 minutes ago, but you know I’ve got more to say…because understanding proportion, or parts of a 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 need to understand proportions in two key areas–your body and your outfits. Let’s start with your body, but we’re going to break it down ever 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. Things like apple, pear, hourglass, inverted triangle..I know you know what I’m talking about. This is the relationship between your bust, waist and hips, or as I look at it your bust and shoulders, waist, and hips. We’re not going to spend a lot of time here today, because the next episode coming up is all about understanding your body shape, and I’ve got other things I’d like to spend time on, 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’s worth mentioning again, because it’s where women get tripped up the most. I’ve 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 she was an apple because she has a tummy. But her top half is smaller than her bottom half, so she’s not an apple at all. Once we looked at the whole picture–aka her proportions, it was much easier to find clothes that fit and flattered her and made her feel good. 

Second, 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, because I want to keep it easy, i’m using them. Two of the 4 basic body shapes have horizontal balance–that’s your rectangles and hourglasses. Their goal is to maintain balance. The other two, apples and pears don’t have horizontal balance, so their goal is to create balance. I know you’d love me to share 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’s way more than I can cover in 30 minutes. That class is the deep dive. But the takeaway here is the first goal when dressing your horizontal proportions is either to create, or maintain balance.

Now let’s talk about vertical proportions, or vertical body shape. First, what is it? 

This is the relationship between your torso length and your leg length. There are no fruity labels here–you can have long legs and a short torso, short legs and a long torso, or 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’s the most overlooked proportion in bodies, but I think it’s just as important. This year, I put together a vertical body shape class for the Style Circle members, and I got so much feedback saying this was the thing that made dressing their bodies finally make sense. 

It’s another reason that the wear this/don’t wear that lists aren’t helpful…they don’t take these super important considerations into account at all. What looks good on a rectangle with a short torso and long legs is 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’ve memorized all the rules, bought all the right things, and it’s still not coming together, this could be why.

And now I’m going to blow your mind–are you ready? Short waisted isn’t the same as having a short torso. Let it sink in, let it marinate… I don’t see anyone else talking about this–they use the terms interchangeably, but they are not the same. Let me explain. 

A short torso is about the length of your actual torso in relation to the length of your legs. Makes sense, right? Ok, stick with me. A short waist–or a high waist- is about the placement of your waist (your smallest part) on your torso. It’s a separate proportion.

Those proportions can go together–in fact, they usually do. If you have a short torso, you’ll often have a short waist because there just isn’t the real estate to have a balanced or long waist. But you can have a long torso and a short waist. How do I know? Well, I’ve seen it hundreds of times, and I’ve 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, 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, and emphasis on your tummy. I know that’s not great news for a lot of women, but at least it explains why it’s happening. You’re not crazy, it’s a real thing, and I don’t know how many women listening right now have labeled themselves a pear, when really, they’re just a high waisted hourglass. If the labels don’t quite fit it's often because of nuance like this. 

Our vertical body shape class covers how to create balance between the length of your torso and the length of your legs, and also, how to create balance ON your torso. 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 that relationship and getting the whole picture. 

But now we’re going to move on and talk about proportions in your outfits, and we’re going to highlight just two parts…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, friends. But yes, getting the parts of your body to look mostly equal is the balance goal.

That’s not the case with outfits. 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 cook a meal, a well-balanced dish doesn’t mean there’s exactly the same amount of every ingredient, right? It’s about knowing the right proportion of each ingredient to use to get the result you want. 

Now that you understand that, let’s move onto length in your outfits. By this I mean where your outfit divides visually–this can be the length of your top vs the length of your bottoms, or where the waistline or a belt on a dress falls. This is vertical outfit proportions.

To understand how to create good balance vertically, we’re going to use a principal made popular by fashion icons like the greek mathmetician Euclid, and Leonardo da Vinci and that is the golden ratio, which says that in nature, art, design, and outfits–things are most aesthetically pleasing when they are divided into thirds instead of halves–with one part of something taking up ⅔ of the space, and the other part taking up up ⅓. It’s not exactly thirds, but this is a show about clothes, not math, so just run with it. 

An example of this would be a cropped jacket with high rise, full length pants. The pants make up ⅔ of the visual length of the outfit, and the jacket takes up ⅓. Now contrast that with ankle length pants, and a jacket that hits at the top of the hip. That’s dividing your outfit into halves, and it doesn’t look as polished or dynamic. It can get 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 ago, my daughters and I were getting ready to go to a Taylor Swift concert–and my older one, who was probably in 5th grade at the time was putting her outfit together..she had this cute little flannel and lace shirt that she was wearing open over a tank and she was pairing it with denim shorts. She started with long, almost bermuda length shorts and didn’t like the way it looked. Then she tried short denim shorts with a 3 or 4 inch inseam. She said, I don’t know why, but the other shorts looked country. These look cute. I don’t know what looking country is, but clearly she didn’t like it. But the important thing is, she naturally stumbled on the golden ratio in her outfit. The top was a little longer, so it looked better with shorts that were shorter. It was a proud mama moment. 

This ratio happens all the time in style. I don’t know if you’ve noticed over the last decade or so, but skirts got longer, rises got higher, and tops got shorter. It all works together. Now we’re seeing more mid and low rise bottoms, shorter skirts–and I have noticed tops getting longer. 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 that your shorter tops and higher rise bottoms are dated–that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m just saying that things shift together for a reason.

Let’s move onto volume distribution. If length is how much each piece takes up in your outfit 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. 

So what does that mean for volume? It simply means 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 mistakes women tend to make when it comes to volume distribution. The first one is too much volume all over like a Baggy top with baggy jeans. Now, this is a look. It’s been a thing with fashiony types and 20 year olds for a few years, but it is really tough to pull off in real life and not look sloppy. If this is a look you think you want to do, I encourage you to do a google image search–just search for baggy top baggy jean outfits women. 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? That’s trying to reign in some volume. Do you like the way baggy and baggy looks? Try it in your own closet. Unless you’re doing it super intentionally, and following through with the styling, this is a tough one. 

The other mistake women make with volume is thinking in the extremes–so when I say volume in one place, they think they have to have a body con top with a ballgown skirt. That’s not it at all. It means if you’re wearing one piece that’s oversized, baggy or voluminous, reign in the volume somewhere else in your outfit. So instead of an oversized sweater with palazzo jeans, pair the sweater with straight legs instead. It doesn’t mean you have to wear skinnies–just don’t go to the extreme with it. If you’re wearing a piece that’s really fitted, give your outfit the balance it needs by wearing something a little relaxed. 

When it comes to length and volume, there’s a lot of intersection–which gives us outfit formulas like “long over lean”. That’s the tunic and leggings 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…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. 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’s crossover between the tools–or clothes–we use to manipulate our body proportions, and the tools we use to create aesthetically pleasing outfits. Let me 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. It does two things. Now, I could wear long tops and ankle pants to get that ⅔  ⅓ outfit ratio, which would still be a good outfit, but it would highlight my longer torso and make my legs look even shorter. 

On the other hand, sometimes our goals are in conflict with each other.  For instance, my horizontal body shape is also imbalanced–my top half is bigger than my bottom half. For that issue, conventional wisdom says I should wear longer tops, and not have any lines cutting across my midsection, which makes my top look bigger. All of that is true, but completely at odds with what balances my vertical body shape like I just shared. I can’t balance both perfectly at the same time with the short top high rise pant combo. I have to choose which is more important to me, or use other clothing elements besides line placement to balance my horizontal body shape. 

And look, that’s reality–you won’t always be able to 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 the tools, or the clothes, are going to do for you. And that takes a ton of guesswork out of looking good.

Ok, we covered a lot today–let’s recap, and get to the all important homework.

Here are the three things I want you to take away from this episode:

1. 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.
2. 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. 
3. 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.

So here’s your homework–and I’m telling you, it’s important, and actually I have two things for you. First, I want you to look at your body’s proportions–don’t worry about the label, don’t bust out a tape measure–I just want you to see if you can determine your bodys horizontal and vertical proportions. Use the words  “than”---or “same as”, so “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’re getting dressed this week, pay attention to your outfits proportions, both in length and volume. If you’re feeling extra, try a golden ratio outfit, or mixing up your volumes…but at least start to recognize the patterns you’re already doing.

I hope this episode encourages you to stop thinking of style as unrelated pieces or measurements and start looking at the whole picture. That’s truly the perspective that changes everything. 

That’s it for this episode of the Everyday Style School. Thanks for spending time with me today. If you’re ready to make style easier and more fun, come join me in the Style Circle. It’s where you’ll get all of our classes, including the deep dives on horizontal and vertical body shapes, as well as capsule guides and style tools, and support to actually use them. 

You can become a member today at youreverydaystyle.com. 

I’ll see you next time–and until then, stay stylish!