While out and about in my local mall the other day I walked past this display in one of our high street fashion stores. It struck me that the designers paid no attention to the wishes and desires of many of their customers when choosing to create this skirt. So often we hear in the media about how retail is having such a terrible time and that nobody is spending money, yet I have clients who want to and need to buy clothes, yet when we go shopping, we are surrounded by unflattering garments. I often wonder – do retailers/designers ever thing about what is flattering on the ‘average’ woman? Does that even enter their consciousness as they put out the latest fashions? If retail is suffering, then maybe retailers should start to pay a little more attention to the design of their clothes to make them work for a greater part of the population.
What struck me about it was that either they are completely unaware of the rules of line and design (as you would hope that the fashion design courses are teaching designers such basic things). Or they only want to dress the super slim and so design garments that the majority of women would feel are unflattering on them (based on what my clients tell me, 99% of them don’t want their hips and thighs to look larger than they already are). This skirt is all about making your hips and thighs look larger with unflattering horizontal lines created by the patch pockets and then highlighting that with the color and fabric selection!
So let’s look at all that bad design:
So next time you’re trying on a garment and it looks terrible, remind yourself that there is a lot of bad design out there in fashion retail land! There is nothing wrong with your body, it’s the clothes that are unflattering.
