Debunking the "Magic" of Stripes!

Stripes were always something that confused me. I’ve heard many times, as perhaps you have, that wearing horizontal stripes will make you look wider and vertical stripes are slimming. At first thought, that seems stands to reason… after all, in many cases adding lines parallel to the lines of your body tends to increase their apparent length (ergo… horizontal lines will make the hip/waist/bust lines wider). For a long while I avoided wearing the infamous horizontal stripe style, but couldn’t help being drawn to looks featuring them. Eventually, horizontal stripes found their way into the black hole that is my closet (as does pretty much everything) and much to my surprise, I loved the way I looked in them! How can this be? Is everything I know wrong? Are cats and dogs living in harmony? The truth is out there!

Like a skeptical red-headed FBI agent, I embarked upon a quest to find the truth about stripes and along the way have reinforced my belief in trusting my eye and intuition. While researching stripes, my search quickly took me out of the world of style and into the world of optical illusions! That’s right kids, horizontal stripes create an optical illusion which, when employed correctly, will make you look slimmer…. Prove it you say? Challenge Accepted!

The secret is based around the Helmhotlz Square Illusion. That sounds pretty awesome right?... Let’s take a look (yes, I’m going to geek out for a moment, bear with me). Which of the two squares below looks skinnier?

I say the one on the left appears skinnier. What do you say?

As you probably guessed, they are actually the same size, yet the horizontally lined square appears taller and skinnier. There is debate as to whether this effect is applicable beyond 2D, and if you’re interested there is a research paper discussing just this question published by the University of York. The verdict? Even when extrapolated out to real clothing on mannequins, the horizontal stripes appeared about 10% skinnier to the eye based on their findings.

Didn’t read the paper? Still Skeptical? Here is a great article with a bunch of side-by-side comparisons of real people styled in vertical and horizontal stripes (for those of you non-nerdy types, I’ve got your backs too).

This pretty conclusively debunks the fashion advice that horizontal stripes make you look fatter. Hooray! Stripes for everyone!... Not so fast. Remember that the width, spacing and placement of stripes on your body play important roles to how flattering a look you can create. Let’s jump into a couple outfits and apply what we’ve just learned.

For the first look as usual, we’ll keep things simple with a navy and white striped sweater.

Straightforward styling here simply uses stripes as a top. This v-neck sweater has thin stripes on  the arms and back paired with slightly large stripes on the front. Overall very flattering. The take home point here is that the stripes themselves are relatively thin. You’ll find that keeping the width of the stripes thinner will allow you to take advantage of stripe’s flattering effects. Wider stripes will end up starting to have that dreaded widening effect. As a good guideline to find your stripe sweet spot, you want to match the stripe size to your body size... smaller/thinner stripes for smaller thinner bodies, larger/more built bodies can tolerate wider stripes and still be flattering. Trust your eye.

Our next example is a bit more fun and pairs a navy pencil skirt with a striped tee for a more nautical/summery look. Nothing says nautical like the color navy and stripes!

The stripes here are wider than in the sweater in the first example. I seem to notice a definite decrease in that magical thinning effect as a result. I know from experience, I'm reluctant to get too much wider with the stripes as they start adding width rather than slimming my body.

Our final example, features stripes used in a layered look, keeping the actual stripes themselves still on the thinner side.

Using stripes as a layer, such as under the black blazer here, is a great way to add texture to your look and give it a little extra pizzazz. Metallic threading (like the silver thread subtly woven through the gray stripes on this top) can tie in well with accessories like the stretch bracelet shown here to bring an outfit together. Since the stripes are not fully exposed across the width of my body, I don’t really take full advantage of the effect. If you find a striped piece you like, but fear the stripes are a bit too wide to aide in slimming, a layer over the top might be just enough to even the whole look out. 

With a little sleuthing, horizontal stripes no longer have to be alien to our style choices... but ultimately in trying to debunk the magic of stripes, we simply find that they are indeed just that, magical. Do you use stripes in your wardrobe?  Have you worked creative stripe magic of your own? 

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Cheers, Kayci