The pear shaped women have nice and feminine curves, but you may also be self-conscious about having a wider bottom, i.e. wider hips and prominent thighs. It is critical for you to find the right sweater styles that can flatter your unique shape and create a visual balance. We will walk you through everything you need to know in this detailed sweater guide to help you find the best sweaters for your body features.
Chunky Knit
Chunky knit sweaters can be a total style saver for every pear-shaped girl out there because not only are they super warm and cozy, but they also have visual benefits to balance your figure. Being pear-shaped means that you have a relatively smaller upper body (narrow shoulders, small bust size), so you’ll need something chunky to give it its much-needed volume.
A chunky knit sweater is typically made from thicker knit fabrics that are voluminous in nature, therefore wearing one would make your upper half catch up with the size of your wider hips and thighs. Just remember to opt for chunky knits that have open necklines to prevent overwhelming your upper half.
Chunky knit sweaters can be a total statement on their own, because of how their voluminous nature is quite easily eye-catching. To style your chunky knit sweater without looking too bulky or overwhelming, pair it with bottoms that are slimming, such as dark wash jeans or a plain midi skirt.
Knitted Scoop Neck
Most types of open necklines are good for your pear-shaped body, most particularly the scoop neck. The deep U-shaped curve that the scoop neckline has opens up space on your upper half to give it more prominence.
How this flattering effect works is that the scoop neck draws attention upward and toward your neck and face, which efficiently creates a visual balance between your narrower upper and wider lower body. This neckline also features an elongation effect while also showcasing your shoulders, helping to broaden your upper body and reduce the focus on the hip area.
Mid-length
You wouldn’t want to add more width or volume to your wider hips and to prevent yourself from doing so, wear a mid-length top that ends just slightly above your hips. Going for a sweater that features such length can visually elongate your frame by making your legs look leaner and longer, creating the illusion of more balanced proportions between your upper and lower halves.
This length also draws attention to the waistline, which is usually the narrowest part of your frame due to the size difference between your waist and hips. This emphasis will highlight your defined waistline and give you a more feminine and flattering look.
Off-the-Shoulder Knit Sweater
The off-the-shoulder neckline is deemed very appealing for pear-shaped figures because of how it helps visually broaden your shoulders and make them more uniform with your wider hips. This particular style also adds femininity to your look in an instant.
Off-the-shoulder sweaters can also gorgeously accentuate the appearance of your neck and collarbone, which draws attention to a more delicate and elegant part of your decolletage. By putting the spotlight on the shoulders and collarbone, it shifts the focus upward to detract the gaze away from the hip and thigh area, addressing your bottom-heavy concern.
Wrap Style Sweater
Wrap style sweaters are often made from lighter types of cozy fabric that cinch at the waist with the use of its distinctive self-tie belt. This wrap belt enables you to fully customize how snugly you want the sweater to wrap around your waist, giving the slimmest part of your waist a nice definition.
This cinch gives you an hourglass-like silhouette as your curves get more accentuated and create a more defined waistline. In addition to this, wrap-style sweaters usually feature soft and draping fabrics that gracefully cascade down the body to give you that alluring fit while toning down your bottom-heavy figure.
Three-Fourths Sleeves
Three-fourth sleeves draw attention to the arms and wrists, so it helps minimize the attention that your heavier bottom half gets and create a more harmonious visual balance between your smaller upper body and bigger lower body.
As your forearms are exposed, three-fourths sleeves efficiently give your overall frame a slimming effect that will even out the unbalanced visual weight you have. It’s a great choice if you don’t like too much coverage and it’s also quite versatile so you have more styling options.
Deep V-Neck
As I mentioned earlier, open necklines can be incredibly helpful for pear-shaped women because of the fact that it opens up enough space on your upper half to showcase your decolletage and veer attention away from your problematic features. A deep V-neck sweater will bring more prominence to your smaller bust line and the line it creates also contributes to broadening your shoulders.
When choosing a deep V-Neck sweater, look for those that open wider, enough to expose more of your collarbones as this will further offset the appearance of the extra visual weight you carry in your hips and thighs. This will also allow the garment to be more versatile and so you’ll have more layering options by going for a wider cut.
Light-colored
It’s not hard to love light colors because of how they can give a fresh and bright appearance to any look. For pear body shapes, this can be particularly beneficial because the sense of vibrancy light-colored sweaters create can shift the attention away from your heavier lower body.
Light colors will subtly draw the eye and create a sense of openness to your frame so when worn on the upper body, the light-colored nature of such a sweater can help balance the proportions of your pear-shaped body. By leading the gaze upward, the lighter shade can visually neutralize the broader lower half with the narrower upper body flawlessly.
If you choose a light-colored sweater that features an open neckline such as a scoop, square, or V-neck, you can allow this and the light color of your sweater to work in cooperation in accentuating and bringing more prominence to your upper body, specifically your décolletage.
Sweaters with Voluminous Sleeves
Sweaters with voluminous sleeves add drama and uniqueness to an outfit, making a bold style statement. This can draw attention away from any perceived problem areas and allow pear-shaped women to express their fashion sense confidently.
Surprisingly, voluminous sleeves can have a slimming effect on the overall silhouette because of how they offset the visual weight you have in your bottom half. By adding just the right amount of volume to the arms and shoulders, the voluminous sleeves can create an illusion of a more slender waist and hip area.
Horizontal Patterns
There is no doubt that your smaller upper body needs a nice volume boost to make it look more proportionate with your wider hips. Horizontal patterns such as stripes will give that much-needed volume and additional width without completely overpowering your stature.
Wearing sweaters that feature horizontal patterns are great choices for adding broadness to your less prominent shoulders. They can also draw attention away from your wider hips and thicker thighs because these patterns tend to be eye-catching.
While horizontal patterns are quite nice and efficient in terms of bringing additional depth to your frame, it’s still ideal to be mindful of the scale of the patterns you’re choosing. Try something that adds volume and grabs enough attention, but not something that will add a heavier visual weight than your bottom half.
Boatneck Style
The wide and horizontal neckline cut of boatneck sweaters helps visually broaden the shoulders significantly, so it nicely counterbalances the wider hips and thighs. This particular broadening effect contributes to creating a more pleasing and proportionate upper and lower body ratio.
Additionally, boatneck sweaters draw attention to the upper body, specifically the neckline and shoulders. By highlighting your upper half, you are also neutralizing the appearance of your heavier bottom half, which is your wide hips and thick thighs.
Avoid Midriff Crop
You may have seen them around a lot because midriff crop sweaters have been making their rounds in the fashion world, making them a very trendy piece. While its beauty and fashion-forward look are undeniably tempting, they may not be the best style option for pear-shaped girls like you because of how they can create an unflattering upper and lower body ratio.
Unlike mid-length sweaters, midriff crop sweaters go much higher and this can cause a disruption in your overall pear body shape proportions. Cropped sweaters may cut the body at a less flattering point, hence making the upper body appear disproportionately smaller in comparison to the lower body.
The length of midriff cropped sweaters may draw attention to your smaller midsection, and therefore accentuate the wider hip area even more. This can make the hips appear relatively more prominent and may not be the most flattering option for those who want to downplay this heavier region.
Avoid tight-fitting Sweaters
Since you have a narrower upper body and a curvy, well-defined waistline, you might be tempted to wear tight-fitting sweaters in hopes of flaunting your smaller waistline. And while it is true that accentuating the waistline is very important, tight-fitting sweaters that cling too close to your entire upper body would also mean that you are highlighting how substantially small your upper body is compared to your lower body.
Wearing a tight-fitting sweater such as bodycon knits will only further emphasize the vast size discrepancy that you have between your less pronounced upper half and wider and thicker bottom half. This may create an awkward fit and will only highlight the natural imbalance present in your silhouette.
Avoid Slouchy Shoulders
As a pear-shaped girl, you are most likely struggling with narrow and drooping shoulders that are obviously quite overwhelmed by your heavier hips and thighs. Wearing slouchy sweaters will make this problem even worse because of how it will drag your body figure down and give you a more awkward fit.
Slouchy sweaters also have the tendency to hide the natural curves of the body, which is especially important for pear-shaped women who need to accentuate their narrow waistlines. Wearing slouchy sweaters will definitely lead to a less defined and less appealing silhouette.
Apart from giving your pear body shape a shapeless look, it may also end up adding an unnecessary amount of bulk to your frame. This additional visual weight may not be the right amount you are looking for and may even give you a heavier look overall.
Avoid Ribbed Sweater
Ribbed sweaters can be an unflattering choice for pear body shapes because of their “ribs” that closely run parallel to each other, making the sweater tight-fitting. These ribs are created using a sewing technique that allows the sweater to be textured and stretchy and so it’s designed to conform very closely to the body.
Ribbed sweaters will look too tight on your body and therefore highlight the fact that your upper body is significantly smaller than your lower body. This will make the substantial size discrepancy between your top half and bottom half even more apparent, causing a great balance disruption in your figure.
Caution with Dark Colors
Dark colors are considered a wardrobe must-have and wearing sweaters in darker colors shouldn’t really be much of a problem. However, pear body shapes have a significantly smaller upper body and the slimming effect of dark colors may further emphasize that and therefore make your bigger lower body look more apparent.
So if you feel like wearing a dark-colored sweater for your next ensemble, be more considerate of your styling options and think of how you can counterbalance its slimming effect. You can go for a chunky knit so that the additional volume brought by its thickness can still give your upper body some structure.
You may also opt to layer your sweaters with other types of garments such as a collared shirt or a scarf. The goal is to bring more depth to your upper body so that the slimming effect of dark colors won’t make your upper body even smaller.
