Flatter Your Figure

The Key to Great Style

Part of being a woman, it seems, is an eternal dissatisfaction with our bodies. While we may groan when we hear a stick-thin celebrity complain about her (perfect!) legs, most of us have some feature that makes us cringe when we look in a dressing room mirror.

Here's the good news: you don't need a fabulous body to look good. The secret is knowing how to hide the parts you loathe and highlight the parts you love. Leah Feldon, author of Does This Make Me Look Fat? The Definitive Rules for Dressing Thin for Every Height, Size, and Shape (Villard, 2002), calls this "camouflage chic." "You have to start with the premise that none of us is perfect," she says. "The basic principle is to accentuate the positives and deflect attention away from your perceived faults." And that's the key to great style, no matter what your body type.

The goal is to present a consistent look from head to toe, so your body looks like a unified whole rather than a collection of individual features. "The eye will go to wherever there's a break in line, proportion, or balance," says wardrobe consultant Mary Lou Andre, author of Ready to Wear: An Expert's Guide to Choosing and Using Your Wardrobe (Perigee, 2004). So if a jacket hemline falls right where your hips are widest, guess what? Your hips will look enormous. If that hemline falls a little higher up -- say, at the hipbone -- it fools the eye into focusing on that slimmer spot.