For the past few days I have been blogging about employing the Golden Mean principle in assembling great-looking (or, at the very least, normal-looking) everyday outfits. Now I will illustrate another combination of lengths in the same proportion, using a jacket I own which is a harder length to wear.
The length of the troublesome jacket is almost to the middle of my thigh, making it half of my total (head to toe) length. Worn with a knee-length skirt, the look would be about 75/25, causing the skirt to appear inappropriately short. With trousers the proportion is a little better, but …
What I really need to complete this outfit is a skirt in that fabulously flattering length that women all over are resisting, the riding skirt. Designed to hit just below the large calf muscle, the length below my (buttoned) jacket would be just about 62% of the length of the jacket.
Incidentally, when putting together a look which incorporates your entire body, from head to toe, your “unit” will be approximately a head-length, measured from visual top of head to chin.
No doubt I will revisit this topic when the weather starts to warm up (and we pull out our crops, capris, shorts, etc.). In the meantime, I keep wondering why I can’t just find some on-line fashion authority who I can link to, borrowing her explanations of these very basic concepts (1 Cor 1:27).
Your posts about proportion are absolutely fascinating to me; I have had nebulous thoughts and concerns about this but haven’t had enough insight or technical background to figure it out. I still don’t completely understand your technical explanations (no time at the moment to go over it slowly and carefully) but I feel this is key to many of my outfit problems. Your example above, the long jacket, is similar, I think, to what has been nagging at me for awhile, how to wear a tunic length shirt with a skirt. They only seem to go with pants. The shirt might work with a long skirt if I wore a low belt, but I don’t like to wear belts. I see that your post is about four and a half years old so I hope you don’t mind a comment at this point; I just discovered your blog.