The hourglass figure is one of the most admired in the fashion world, as it features a beautiful feminine silhouette and curvy outlook. However, to fully enhance these key features and stand out, there are a few golden rules to follow. Here are the top ten hourglass fashion mistakes to avoid if you truly want to look your best and feel confident on every occasion.
Oversized Clothing
Wearing oversized clothing is a trendy fashion style that many women are tapping into today. It’s fashionable to wear an oversized top on baggy trousers with a pair of flats. However, this doesn’t work for everyone. If you have an hourglass body shape, this is not the style for you as it doesn’t highlight your unique shape but makes you look shapeless.
Oversized clothing will give you a rounder outlook that hides your curvy figure. This style of clothing will also make you look bigger than you actually are. So, if you don’t want to walk into events looking bloated in oversized clothing, it’s best to completely avoid them. Instead, choose fitted clothing that emphasizes your assets without being uncomfortable.
Shapeless Dresses
Another common hourglass fashion mistake is putting on shapeless dresses. Dresses come in different styles, shapes, and sizes. Choosing the dress for your body shape is a very important task. You don’t want to choose one that is too loose-fitting or another that is tight-fitting on your body frame. Therefore, the key is finding that balance that lends an air of elegance and comfort to your dressing. The first step is completely avoiding shapeless dresses.
This includes baggy tops and dresses that have a sack-like appearance. Shapeless dresses are exactly how they sound. They hang loosely on the body where they hide the waistline and give the appearance of a less defined silhouette. Shapeless dresses also create a formless look especially when they hang straight from the shoulders in an unflattering shape. Wearing shapeless dresses makes you miss that important chance to highlight your well-defined waist and accentuate your curves. It’s better to wear cinched styles that showcase your waist instead.
Tube Tops
Tube tops are not recommended for the hourglass figure as they are usually strapless and don’t provide the necessary support that women with full bust need. It’s no secret that the hourglass body shape usually comes with a fuller bust area and wearing a tube top won’t give the right amount of coverage. Instead, this can be quite uncomfortable and will do nothing to enhance your look. Tube tops also increase the chances of spillage as they are prone to sliding down when worn by people with large busts.
That constant need to adjust your tube top won’t inspire confidence in you. Meanwhile, this style of top is known to create a cylindrical silhouette from the bust to your waist. Women with an hourglass body shape need to highlight their waist as this is a key feature and the narrowest part of the body. You can’t do this with a tube top as it will give your body a straighter figure without emphasizing the natural curves of the waist.
The hourglass body shape is also known for having a balanced bust and hip, but a tube top has the potential to create a top-heavy look. This will eventually disrupt the visual balance between your hips and bust.
Poor Fitted Undergarments
Every woman, no matter her body shape, should wear properly fitted undergarments. Unfortunately, some hourglass-shaped women don’t pay as much attention as they should to the fit of their undergarments, including shapewear and bras. Poorly fitted undergarments can cause awful shaping, sagging and discomfort as they don’t adequately support your bust and other relevant parts of your body. However, a properly fitted bra will support your bust and positively enhance your feminine silhouette.
Poor fitted undergarments can also create unflattering bulges that are visible underneath your clothing, especially around your hips. This affects the natural smooth lines of your hourglass figure and gives the appearance of bumps around your body. Consequently, this will lead to the loss of your waist definition, so you have the appearance of a compressed waist instead of a well-defined one. Undergarments have a huge role to play in enhancing your body proportions.
When they are not properly fitted, this can make your hips appear uneven and your waist bigger than it is, which disrupts your balanced body proportion. So, you should definitely put more effort into getting professionally fitted and high-quality undergarments that create a sleek appearance.
Horizontal Stripes
It’s easy to fall in love with clothing styles that have horizontal stripes but this is a mistake that hourglass-shaped women should avoid. Horizontal stripes are known to have a widening effect, which means that it creates the illusion of width on your body. So, if you wear horizontal stripes across your hips or bust, they will make these areas appear wider than they are which disrupts your body proportions. Therefore, horizontal stripes is not the most flattering choice for hourglass women with proportionate bust and hip, and a well-defined waist.
This can distract from these appealing features as they draw attention away from the waistline and shift attention to the width of your body across specific areas. Therefore, your waist is not easily noticeable and your beautiful curves become non-existent. Instead, horizontal stripes create a boxy appearance which is not great for women who would like to accentuate their natural curves instead.
Overall, a much better choice is vertical stripes as clothes with this style have an elongation effect on the body instead. Vertical stripes give the illusion of being taller, which is perfect for the short hourglass figure.
High Necklines
High necklines include turtlenecks which are great for covering up most of your neck. However, you shouldn’t wear clothing styles that cover up your neck as you need to highlight your neckline instead. The biggest benefit of highlighting your neckline is that you will project a more balanced and elongated appearance, which complements your body frame no matter your height. Another major disadvantage of high necklines is that they promote a top-heavy look.
Since they visually add more volume to the upper part of your body, this can give a disproportional look, especially for women with a large bust. Therefore, there’s no balance with the curves of your hourglass shape and that’s not a flattering look. A heavy upper body means that you look bigger without a curvy outlook. Also, remember how you’re meant to avoid tops with horizontal stripes? Well, high necklines can create a horizontal visual line as well.
Of course, this will disrupt your feminine hourglass silhouette. Therefore, instead of high necklines, choose tops and dresses with open necklines that expose your collarbone. Some great choices are scoop neckline and V-neckline. These contribute to a more balanced outlook where you’ll feel absolutely comfortable in your own skin.
Low Rise Bottoms
Yes, low rise styles can look good but it’s not a good idea to wear them as an hourglass-shaped woman who want to look effortlessly beautiful. Typically, low-rise bottoms sit below the natural waistline and this is the perfect opportunity to create a muffin-top effect on your body. Another way to describe a muffin top is tummy bulge. This means that if you have a bit of tummy, low rise bottoms can make a lot of extra flesh spill over your waistband, making your tummy bulge look larger.
This is definitely not a flattering look for the hourglass figure. Sitting lower on your hips also means that there is less emphasis on your waistline, which is not great for the hourglass body shape. You need bottoms that highlight your curves and accentuate your waist like mid-rise or high-waist bottoms. Ultimately, low-rise bottoms will also make your hips appear broader, which leads to an imbalance in your body proportions.
It’s always best to choose bottoms that sit at your natural waist to ensure you have a proportionate look all through. Of course, we need to talk about how uncomfortable low-rise bottoms can be, especially as they tend to expose too much skin and make you feel less confident as you constantly readjust them. You can completely avoid this by choosing bottoms with more coverage.
Excessive Girly Details
By excessive girly details, we mean features like frills, bows and ruffles on tops, skirts and dresses. Using these girly details excessively can create an exaggerated aesthetic that minimizes the feminine effect of your hourglass silhouette. If you don’t like extreme looks, wearing clothes with excessive girly details is a bad idea. However, apart from these, the hourglass figure has a natural air of sophistication and elegance that makes it stand out. Excessive girly details will distract people from this instead.
Also, excessive layers of ruffles can add extra bulk to your body. That extra volume is not necessary on an hourglass figure when the focus is on maintaining a balanced silhouette and accentuating your curves. It’s best to avoid excessive girly details that can draw focus away from the key features of your body type, including a balanced hip to bust ratio, and well-defined waistline.
Over-Accessorizing
The accessories are beautiful and amazing. They add a lot of color and flair to outfits, and easily transform your ensemble from drab to full of life. However, this only happens when you accessorize in moderation. The key is to use accessories to complement your dressing, not draw attention away from your hourglass figure. Over-accessorizing will divert attention from the natural beauty of your curves and with more attention on your accessories, you may end up looking like a well-decorated doll.
Also, an outfit with too many pieces will look busy and cluttered. This can be overwhelming to the eye, and destroy the lovely aesthetic of your outfit when people can’t seem to look anywhere without an accessory staring right back at them. You can harness the true beauty of the hourglass body shape when there is less focus on excessive accessories and more focus on your balanced body proportions and curves. Of course, over-accessorizing can also lead to an imbalance in your body proportions.
There’s a huge chance that they would make you appear unbalanced, not to mention how uncomfortable excessive accessories can be on the body. Stand out with a more minimalistic approach to accessorizing your outfit by keeping it simple and classy.
Baggy Jeans
The major characteristic of baggy jeans is that they have a loose fit from your hips down to your ankles. This also means that they are loose-fitting around your waist, which hides your well-defined waistline. The last thing you would want to do as an hourglass-shaped woman is to hide your narrow waist that is largely responsible for your curvy outlook. Hiding this desirable feature with baggy jeans will give you a boxy appearance that is not typical for your body type.
Rather than accentuate your natural curves, baggy jeans lack structure and have a loose fit that will create an unbalanced appearance on your body. This is much worse when combined with oversized clothing as the final result is a shapeless form that is not flattering for your figure. Baggy jeans have no shape and structure, and this will be transferred automatically to your body. They drape loosely over your shape and transform you from having a feminine silhouette to a straight one.
This style of jeans will also add unflattering bulkiness to the lower part of your body, making you look heavier and visually wider at the waist. Instead of baggy jeans, you should wear fitted jeans that flow naturally with your curves without being too tight on your body frame.
When it comes to fashion, your comfort and personal style are the most important factors to consider. Avoiding these huge mistakes will get you started on what you need to create a wardrobe full of flattering outfits for your hourglass body shape. With this, you can be sure that you will always look elegant and classy wherever you go.
