Horizontal or vertical stripes. Which make you look taller and slimmer?

I had some lovely comments to my last post  “What to wear to a summer barbecue” so thank you to all my lovely readers. One particular comment caught my eye as I had not really noted that I was wearing horizontal stripes on my bottom half. As I have a pear shape figure I guess I was breaking the rules.

Thank you Jan for bringing it to my attention. Comment below:-

The first word I thought of was *statuesque* … you manage to look tall and elegant in horizontal stripes. On your bottom half, yet! Sigh. Never happening for me … but nice to know that it can be done, and done beautifully.
Lovely, the whole thing!

This got me thinking so I decided to do some research and came up with the following:-

Visual illusion. Horizontal or vertical stripes? Which make you look taller and slimmer and which fatter and shorter? The common thinking is that vertical stripes give the illusion of height. This apparently is not how it really is. In 1867 women knew that horizontal stripes made them look taller, according to Hermann Von Helmholtz, a physicist. who first experimented with the ideas of visual perception of space.

marksandspencer stripe wool skirt

Marksandspencer stripe skirt

My-Wardrobe stripe blue skirt

Do you favour stripes. If so do you prefer vertical or horizontal and how do you wear them?

Finally the winner of “She landed by Moonlight” by Carole Seymour-Jones is  Crisp. Congratulations and apologies for the delay it seems to have taken Amazon a while to deliver a copy to me. Please contact me at Chicatanyage(at)btinternet.com with your address and I will send you a copy. 


I really love to hear from you and appreciate the time you take to leave comments.
Fashion and Style, Beauty tips, Lifestyle

4 Comments

  1. 16th August 2013 / 10:44

    Oh, Jo…I LOVE stripes…horizontal or vertical…I can’t resist them. I still have a much loved pair of striped trousers that must be 15 years old 🙂 they’re silk grey and white Emporio Armani…cost me a fortune but I still have them!
    You look GORGEOUS in your horizontal striped skirt 🙂
    I agree with you vertical stripes definitely give the illusion of height.
    Have a wonderful weekend.
    xx

  2. 16th August 2013 / 15:08

    I am a 63 year old American reader and want to say that this post is so timely for me! I just “discovered” horizontal stripes last week! My mother had always taught me to stay away from them because “they make you look shorter and fatter”! A sales lady in Banana Republic (I think you have those in England too, right?)urged me to try on a horizontally striped dress which I did quite skeptically. I am a large breasted woman and didn’t want to end up looking like Dolly Parton. Surprise! Mother was wrong! I quickly snapped up about 6 horizontal striped tops which are now the mainstay of my wardrobe!!

  3. 16th August 2013 / 16:39

    Ginger Savely. Good for you. I am the same age and realise that our mothers, bless them, were not always right.

  4. 18th August 2013 / 15:00

    I love wide horizontal stripe tops. A dark stripe at the waist is slimming on me. I haven’t tried a striped bottom. If I did, it would have to be a skirt. I love your long horizontal striped skirt.

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