A DIY Fashion Lab
I’m trying to get back to a more regular posting schedule, including Fashion Labs on Fridays. Any what to wear questions on your mind? You, too, can be a model for a future fashion lab and benefit from the input of others. Drop me a line. 
Ever since Vildy told me about Brenda Kinsel’s body proportion principles, I’ve been a cow. That is, I’ve been ruminating on the idea of the four zones. Grab your measuring tape, here’s how it works:
Zone 1: Top of face (I think this must need to be top of head/hair) to top of chest, approximately armpit. (Mine = 14)
Zone 2: Armpit to … legpit. That is, the break in the leg, aka the hip socket. (Mine = 18)
Zone 3: Hip socket to mid-knee. (Mine = 15)
Zone 4: Mid-knee to floor. (Mine = 18)
(Somewhere in the imprecision of self measuring, I lost 3/4 of an inch!)
In reality, this ends up being very close to taking two of the head lengths I have talked about before at a time, but the application is slightly different. Brenda Kinsel suggests considering each zone as a room in a house. The larger the room, the more furniture (line breaks, detailing, embellishments, bells and whistles) you can put in there. Which explains why I don’t want jeans that hug the thigh, tapering in at the knee; they just emphasize how short I am in that zone.
This has also got me thinking alot about tops, and just in time too! More on this to come, but for now:
- Is anybody long in zone 1? If so, do you by chance have a more glamorous style, using more jewelry and accessories than most? I’m feeling justified in liking to keep things simple in that “room” in my house.
- What is your “biggest room” and how have you already been filling it? For example, with my long torso I can easily wear short jackets (inches above the hip socket) which are fitted at the waist (the change of line direction has the opposite effect of a straight vertical line), even belted with pockets.
- Can you think of ways to “borrow” space from one zone for the other? I just realized why it doesn’t really matter if my jeans are skinny, straight, or wide, just as long as the line is unbroken from hip to floor: that is effectively “borrowing” from my length in zone 4 to add to zone 3.
This is going to have a huge impact on my wardrobe! How about you?
Love the linking of a large 1st “room” and glamor. Pretty hard to focus on your face with accessories when that’s my smallest room! My largest is the thigh area but I have meaty thighs and am 59 1/2, who wants to focus there? But might explain why the short summer skirt I have works: denim yoke that ends in a couple of printed chiffon tiered flounces.
I’m about 11 1/2, 13, 18, 17 1/2. And I always just accepted that I have short legs because, well, I’m short. They’re shorter than taller people’s legs! It gives me a whole new view. And I feel long-waisted but maybe that’s because I’m thicker - I’m a short person with relatively big bones and am usually more slender looking from front or back but much thicker looking when viewed from the side. And maybe I tend to wear my belts/waistlines a little low.
I meant that because I’m a stocky person, plus now have the bosom that I didn’t when I was younger, that I take up enough room in a bodice that it can hit me short, making me feel long-waisted.
My last comment I promise - but this has been eye-opening for me now that you’ve done the preliminary legwork. Maybe I should be testing out advice for short waisted people! I love wide sash belts but I confess that I think of them as cummerbunds. Glad now that I ordered those very slim belts from Wilsons. I bet they’ll be great.
This is interesting! I am 5′9″: 14-18.5-17-19.5. I have always thought of myself as average to short-waisted (despite my height, I do not take a “long” swimsuit), but with quite long legs. These measurements certainly bear this out, but is it possible that I am only really long in Zone 4? That is, are my knees placed unusually high?!
I guess I do compensate for this trait, in that I prefer long skirts, with my second choice being just covering the knee. Showing my knee, even a little, makes me look very, very leggy (and not in a good way . . .). Re: the relatively short torso: I almost always wear tops that hang over my waistband–untucked blouses, longer fitted t-shirts and sweaters, and so on.
Rebecca, I notice that our proportions are almost the same in the top two zones–but you think of your torso as long (which I guess it is, proportionately). How tall are you?
Too much measuring for me!
That’s said partly in jest, but partly in truth. The mathematical interpretations just don’t appeal to me. If I can’t figure out what works visually, it’s going to remain beyond me.
I’m going to look into this! Living in the cold NE (transplanted from TX), I have all of a sudden found myself without many skirts. I have long skirts that I wear with boots, but as far as a real skirt that I would either wear with boots or heels, I don’t really have many. I tried some on and wasn’t very happy with the look. Is it because I’m just not used to them, or I’m looking for the wrong style?
One of my problems is that I have a serious shoe problem. I wear a 9 to 9 1/2 (and one foot is a fair bit bigger than the other), and sometimes even a N is too wide. I have bought shoes online, but they are always more expensive, and for someone who doesn’t spend much $ on clothes, that’s a problem too.
Boots I can buy off the rack, so that’s another reason I’ve leaned in that direction lately.
I think we’ve talked about this before, but my daughter needs narrow shoes also and it seems they are getting harder and harder to find. If you find a brand you like, do let us know. Also, did you know that Nordstrom has a policy that if your feet differ by a certain amount they will split up pairs to make a pair that will fit you?
I was thinking about this length thing the other day and wondering if it’s connected to the tightly held preferences many ladies have for above the knee or below the knee skirts. I have always preferred below the knee, which makes sense based on my proportions.
[…] question: On a very old topic, I went back and tried the measuring the four zones thing and found my measurements were almost the same as yours except my Zone 2 was even longer […]