Imogen would you do a post, with illustrations, for golden mean proportions on petites for casual styles and for skirts and dress ensembles? I know you have done casual capsules, but I need more guidance. Firstly, I just want to stress that you shouldn't get obsessed with following the golden mean exactly! It's certainly harder for petites than average or tall women. Just think about not making your outfit boxy and not swamping your frame with too much fabric (either end of the spectrum).
You can use colour to create the illusion of longer proportions.
Casual Skirt Outfit Proportions
Ideally with all outfits when there are two or more garments (top and bottom) we want to create two rectangles - sitting on top of each other. Just one rectangle is longer than the other. This is trickier for petites as they have less natural height (duh) so it means that garments on the whole tend to be shorter. But we can use colour to create the illusion of longer proportions, by:
- Wearing tights and boots in the same colour as your skirt making the proportion from hip to ground long
- Wearing nude shoes to not break up the leg further
- Tucking a top in under a jacket or cardigan to shorten the top proportion whilst keeping the longer proportion on the lower half then wearing a slightly longer jacket over the tucked in top to create that longer rectangle (rather than square of the tucked in top) shape. This can work for H and V shapes who don't have a defined waist as the horizontal is shortened by the jacket.
- It's better to cut your body into thirds if you need to keep proportions shorter (rather than halves).
