Find Your Fit! A guide to discovering your body shape.

Trends are always changing and it’s not necessarily easy to keep up with them, especially when our unique bodies do not fit what is in fashion. At Cotton Dayz, we want ladies to embrace, empower and enjoy their personal style, and key to this is knowing how to work with your body shape. Knowing your body means you can look out for clothes that not only make you feel good, but look fabulous on you. With this in mind we wanted to help you figure out your body shape and give some helpful advice in our new blog series Find Your Fit! But before we  start giving you styling tips, we need to determine your body shape

The surest way to know your body shape is by measuring yourself. You want to measure four things:

1.     Shoulders (Loosely wrap the tape around the very tops of your shoulders, at their broadest point above your shoulder blades)

2.     Bust ( Snuggly wrap the tape around the fullest part of your bust- not too tight though!)

3.     Waist (Measure the narrowest part of you waist- its normally above your belly button)

4.     Hips  (Measure the fullest part of your hips and bottom, just below your hip bones)

Now you’ve got your measurements, we can find out your shape! The relationship between these measurements can help you determine your shape. While every body is unique in its own right, most figures can be categorised into a few different groups based on the relationship between their measurements; Apple, Pear, Hourglass, inverted triangle, rectangle, petite & compact, short torso or long torso.  Let’s explore each figure!

You May be an Apple if…

• Your shoulders, bust, waist, and hips are fairly uniform, however your shoulders and hips may be slightly slimmer.
• Your waistline is rather undefined and you have a larger bust
• Visually, you hold most of the weight in the centre of your body
• Think Melissa McCarthy or Drew Barrymore

You may be a Pear if…

• Your hips and thighs are wider than your shoulders and bust- in other words, as the youngsters say, you are lovely and Thicc (yes, with two cc's)
• Your upper body is more petite
• Your may have a defined waist that is narrow compared to your hips
• Think: J-Lo or Rhianna

You may be an Hourgalss if…

• You’d describe your body as curvy
• your shoulders and hips are a pretty much equal width and your have a well-defined waist
• Most likely, you have a larger bust and bottom- You are a curvy queen!
• Think: Kim Kardashian or Christina Hendricks

You may be an Inverted Triangle if…

• Your shoulders are the widest part of your figure
• You may have a larger bust
• Your hips waist, legs and ankles are slim.
• You can be seen as athletic
• Think: Angelina Jolie or Renee Zellweger

You may be an Rectangle if…

• Your shoulders, bust and hips measurements are very uniform
• Your waist is straight
• You don’t have many curves, no matter what size you are
• Think Tilda Swinton or Kate Middleton

You may be Petite & Compact if...

• You’re 160cm (5’3”) or under- in other words, you’re pretty small
• Regular sleeves and straps are often too long on you
• Pockets, shoulders or knees on garments never fall in the right places
• Though your frame is small, you are slender and have a bit of curve
• Think: Emilia Clarke or Hayden Panettiere

You may be Short Torso if...

• Proportionally speaking, the top half of your frame is smaller than the bottom half
• Pant legs tend to be too short on you- In other words, you’ve got legs for dayz
• To determine whether your torso is short, use the two-hand rule: Stack your hands on our tummy just below your bust. If your belly button is right next  to the edge of your bottom hand, your torso is short!
• Think: Solange or Catherine Zeta-Jones

You may be Long Torso if...

• Opposite of short torso, the top half of your body appears more elongated, while your lower half is shorter proportionally.
• To determine whether your torso is long, use the two-hand rule: Stack your hands on our tummy just below your bust. If your belly button is located a few centimetres away from the edge of your bottom hand, your torso is long!
• Think Olivia Wilde

Keep an eye out for more blogs in our Find Your FIt series, where we will go through every body shape and give advice on how to style each one!

With love, the Cotton Dayz Team xx