Clothing colors, patterns, cuts, and styles can be paired to flatter your body type. Knowing how this is done is especially useful when you do not have a perfect model-like built. Below are some tips on how to dress to flatter your body type.
Dress Tips for Heavy Built Men
The quickest way to lose a few inches on your waist is by picking fabric patterns that make you look taller and thinner. The best patterns that stretch your height, and at the same time trim your waist, are pin stripes on suit and narrow stripes on your dress shirt.
Next up are the colors. You may have heard the term that “Black makes thin”. Use this weight loss trick to your advantage by wearing dark colored suits. Finally, the cut of the suit, shirt, and tie can help you shred a few pounds. Look for suits that have a classic American cut (a cut that is not tapered at the waistline). Also excellent are double breasted suits as well as blazer jackets. The best dress shirts have a wider collar spread that is paired with a thicker tie knot such as the Double Windsor Knot – a combination that will perfectly compliment a larger neck size and heavier built without adding too much bulk. Regular width ties are preferred for bigger men since the narrow skinny ties will look disproportionate with your body type.
Dress Tips for Thin Men
Just as proper clothing can make you look thinner and taller, patterns, colors and cuts can also make thin men look bigger – something much healthier than overindulging on happy meals at your closest fast food chain.
Unfortunately the best pattern, horizontal stripes, for adding a few inches to your frame is almost never found on classic suits or dress shirts. However, wide stripes will have a very similar effect. Also excellent are heavier and thicker fabrics for suits and overcoats. Pants should also be pleated and cuffed. The biggest no-no’s are high buttoned suit jackets, straight cut pants, as well as pants that are tailored too short. The correctly tailored pants should have a slight fold on top of the dress shoes when standing, and should only show a few inches of your dress socks when sitting down.
Dress Tips for Short Men
Best are lighter colors for shorter men. Choose a light to medium gray suit over a charcoal or black one and pick dress shirts in white or light blue rather than maroon, brown, black, or gray. If you prefer to wear some pattern on shirt and suit, then finer patterns are best. For suits excellent patterns are fine birds eye, very narrow and delicate pin-stripes, as well as fine herringbone or hounds tooth check. For dress shirts best are fine vertical stripes as well smaller check patterns with light color contrast.
Choose a single breasted suit with one or two buttons. Double breasted suits, suits with 3 or more buttons, as well as 3-piece suits are a no-no for short men that want to add inches to their height. Your pants should have no pleats since straight-cut pants appear longer and slimmer – adding another inch to your height.
The biggest clothing don’ts for shorter men are blazer jackets (especially double breasted jackets), heavy fabric weaves, large scale fabric patterns, bow ties, suspenders, as well as contrasting color shirt and jacket combinations.