More skin = less bust. That’s the lesson I learned from Imogen Lamport when she suggested I unfasten one more button in the shirt I’m wearing below.
However, from Amy Herzog’s Knit to Flatter workshop I learned that it’s not only about showing more skin–it’s also about grouping. If you group your chest with your waist, it will look longer and lower. If you group it with your neckline, it will look shorter and higher. In the photo above, I have what Amy calls “waist boob”.
Amy, who wears a DD cup, demonstrated her point in a crewneck Fair Isle sweater, a garment I previously thought was totally off limits to D+ women. On the left, Amy has placed the pattern above her bust line. This groups her bust line with her waist region, resulting in waist boob. She totally looks like she wears a DD or higher. On the right, the pattern includes her bust line. This groups her bust line with her neckline, and she looks like she wears a C cup or less.
A deep neckline is a way both to show more skin and group the bust with the neckline. The key word is deep because even though everyone tells busty women to wear V-necks, all V-necks are not created equal. You can see why with this left-to-right progression.
Flatteringly deep necklines are why camis won’t be going away anytime soon. In the second photo from the left, I’ve placed the tip of the neckline at the top of my cami, exactly where my cleavage begins. It looks okay, but the two photos on the right look much better. (By the way, if you haven’t already answered my neckline depth survey, there’s still time before I collect the results. I’ll delete this parenthetical after I close the survey.)
Besides neckline depth and patterns, we can also use accessories to group bust line and neckline. I don’t have examples right now. Do you? It’s something I want to explore going forward.
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Now I understand another reason that this top with horizontal stripes across my bust line actually looks good–the pattern groups my bust with the top half of my torso.
You can see the same principle with this Pepperberry dress.
This is fascinating. I’m going to have to keep an eye out for this kind of thing. Thanks.
So glad you find this as interesting as I do!
Truly interesting! I more or less knew about the V neck but never quite figured out why some v-necks looked good and others didn’t. And I was so surprised to see about the stripes and the pattern in the sweater! I had just about banned horizontal stripes in my t-shirts. This is really helpful. Thank you!
Same here! I have some simple black V-neck tees that I feel good in, and others I feel frumpy in, and until Amy demonstrated the differences in the workshop, I didn’t understand why either. And we can wear horizontal stripes a lot more than is commonly thought.
I wonder how this is affected by waist-height belts, especially wide/obi belts? My inclination is that it creates a longer bust-waist grouping.
I’m working on a top that has multi-directional stripes as well as V with a cowl-like collar & tie. It’ll be interesting to see how grouping works with it.
Because of so many years of wearing button-down shirts that had to be worn half open with a cami, I now tend to associate deep necklines with a cami as “large breasts, couldn’t button her shirt”. That’s probably why I prefer the picture second from the right to the one all the way at the right in the four V-neck progression. I like a V shape, but not if I have to wear something under it.
This is exactly why I have resisted camis, AE!
Couldn’t fit this all on Twitter, haha. But I wanted to also point out that with the faire isle sweater pictured above – unless she had the same one in a different size and shape – is pulled up on the left, pulled down on the right. Let’s just ignore the whole pattern for now:
On the left this creates room under her bust giving an illusion her ribcage/waist are much smaller than her bust which in turn makes her bust look bigger. It also makes her waist look tremendously short so your eye naturally goes to the larger portion, or what’s more noticeable.
However on the right it’s much tighter fitting. This happens whenever you pull most styles of tops below where they should sit; the neckline and everything below that up to the bust point on the top is stretched over the bust of the person to accomodate room since the bust of the top is now pulled below the bust. This makes her ribcage and waist look larger which makes her bust look smaller…as does the way she’s standing. I hate to nitpick but her posture is different in both, more concaved on the right giving another illusion of a smaller chest. But anyway, as with the left, this one is opposite. Top pulled down, more length in front giving a taller appearance – your eye is drawn (again, ignore faire isle) to the larger portion which would be the length created in the torso.
Her bust still ends at relatively the same point on the bottom, regardless of the pattern on this sweater. But because the pattern is on top of the majority of her bust in the right photo, it’s continuing it to look higher up on her neck. So you can’t really change where your bust sits with illusions. If the neck is high, you’ll still see the bottom of the bust where it ends. If it’s higher you’ll see where it starts. I do agree with you on grouping it with either the neck or waist, but on shorter torsos it will be easier to do and some women don’t even have to look for clothes to try this, whereas with a long torso because there is more room it will always look more balanced, grouping won’t be as easy. When I refer to a long torso, I’m including the shoulder to bust length with rib to hips. A long bottom torso with a short upper torso will always have their bust grouped with their neck, and vice versa.
Sorry if none of this made much sense. I think in pictures and have a hard time writing it.
If I understand you, you’re saying there are other factors at play in addition to the pattern. Am I correct? If so, I definitely agree and want to look at those factors more carefully. It’s too bad I couldn’t take better comparison pics of Amy. One detail I didn’t mention is that the photo on the right is of the sweater hanging where it was designed to hang (unless she was trying to exaggerate by pulling it down, but I didn’t get that sense from her demonstration).
Absolutely! The eye is always drawn more to details whether they’re in texture, colorwork or fit, over something with less or none.
I must say, you’ve added length to your neckline on the V-neck progression. With the neck closed, the top of your bust is grouped with your neck even though the bottom of your bust seems grouped with your waist. With the neck open it’s more balanced out even though now your bust looks like it starts higher up it also looks dropped because the neck is lower. I’ve always understood it that the point or bottom of neckline would be in more focus rather than the open neck/collar bones or skin itself? Perhaps my eyes are wonky and just see things opposite from others? Haha =D
I just tried this experiment in Paint. I drew an empty triangle then copy & pasted it but filled in the second one, they’re both the same exact size. The empty triangle looks like there is more volume within it as opposed to the one that’s filled in. You could liken it to shirts, like your v-neck. The filled in one represents the neck closed and it gives a shortened appearance. The empty triangle is the neckline open/dropped, you see more space so now that area looks taller. http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r32/XblackResonanceX/Untitled_zpsbd2fe066.png Just noticed the comment below mine from Malica, but that’s what I was trying to get at with this, lol.
Great post!
And there is one more visual effect with deep V: it stops our eyes from going along the bust line (i. e. horizontally, on apex level). Our eyes are lazy, they like to go along the lines and when you have a deep V, then eyes go along neckline. And it was proved that if there is a shape (that has some lines inside) than we overestimate the dimension in which our eyes were going (along the lines) and underestimate the opposite direction. So with high neckline we tend to overestimate width of the torso and with low neckline we tend to overestimate length (of cause prints, necklaces etc can change this).
Oh, wonderful! Thank you!
I keep wondering why I have some shirts that work, others that don’t. This is probably part of it. I wonder if I can start wearing horizontal-ish patterns again, using this technique? Any opportunity to get out of solids, I’ll try.
The other phenomena I noticed, since I am so short waisted, is I can only wear very short vertical(ish) sleeves or 3/4 sleeves that fall below my elbow. Everything else makes my chest/shoulders into a giant “box” and visually places my bust on my hips-especially if the sleeve ends around my bust. An alernate version of where my chest pairs?
Thin horizontal stripes are actually slimming if there are more then 8 of them (then we tend to perceive them as a whole and move eyes vertically, not horizontally). Additional bonus is that they don’t get badly distorted if we are dealing with jersey as it happens with vertical stripes.
Yeah, that’s what I thought until I tried it recently. Didn’t work….
Then again, nothing works, but I keep trying!
I think I’m just tooooo wiiiiiddddeeee.
May be stripes were too wide or had too small contrast, may be the cut of the item was off, but in any case: print can’t do a miracle, you can look a little bit slimmer and taller if you get it right, but a little bit is a key here. Although I think that there is much more important thing then to look slimmer: it’s to be in harmony and be happy ), it makes us beautiful whatever size and shape we are. So if you feel like “these stripes are totally me” then by any means go for stripes!
I really loved the post. however would like to make a small correction: cup size means nothing without band size. This is because cup size is relative to band size. So a 28DD cup is the same size as the cups of a 30D, 32C, 34B and 36A bras!
I feel it’s not the size of your chest that determines if you need to master this theory. You wouldn’t even be here if you didn’t think that you have a balance problem. One person’s large isn’t necessarily another’s idea of large. I just want balance.
Amazing. I can’t believe the timing. I posed this question on my new favorite site and someone hooked me up. I’m still working out which way I want to go (either neck boob or waist boob but my gut tells me the higher they appear the better). I do have some “guidelines” on necklace that I picked up on the tv.
Boat neck shirt shortens torso so wear long necklace
v-neck shirt. Statement piece (no chocker) Don’t let it go beyond the lines of the neckline.
as far as the jewelry aspect may I suggest you wear a long necklace with the stripped shirt both out and tucked in thus also testing if the the influence of where the shirt hits you?