If you’re anything like me, you’d like to wear your signature jeans in any informal settings (and beyond). Jeans, aside from being one of the most versatile garments, are available in countless variations in fit, style, and color, which allows you to always find your perfect fitted pair.
In this post and in the following one, we will see how to choose and wear these timeless garments making the most of your physical assets.
When talking about jeans (and trousers in general), one of the most important things to keep in mind is that hemming your pants at the appropriate length is essential to achieve a taller-appearing figure.
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As a line that visually breaks the figure, the hem is a key factor when it comes to enhancing your legs and your whole figure. If properly hemmed, your signature jeans can make you look chic, slim, and sophisticated; but the wrong hem can add unwanted extra pounds while making you look anything but classy.
If you do not properly hem your trousers and leave them just wrapping around your legs like ivy, you could easily look more full-figured and your legs would only wind up looking shorter.
There is an old Tuscan saying very appropriate to describe this outcome, and it says “buy some leg or sell some cloth,” which refers to pants that are too long for one’s legs. If your intention is to look slimmer and classy, thus, it’s better to avoid jeans that are not correctly hemmed (and also cuffed ones).
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In winter, in particular, this rule is mandatory because when wearing knee-length coats, the lower leg is the only part of your body that remains visible, and if the trousers are not properly hemmed, instead of a long, vertical, straight line that visually stretches the silhouette, you get a messy ensemble that shortens the whole figure.
The ideal hem height for straight, skinny and cigarette pants is usually at the ankle (one inch higher than your malleolus if you have thin ankles—slightly lower if your ankle is not very thin). This solution is not only the most versatile but also the most slimming one, as it highlights your ankle—the slimmer part of your leg—and has an overall slimming effect on your whole figure. Furthermore, if you hem your straight jeans at the ankle, you can pair them with any type of shoe—be they high heels, ballet flats, lace-up booties, or sneakers.
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With flared jeans, the correct hem height is long enough to cover the heel but no longer—otherwise it has the unpleasant outcome of widening your leg. Boot-cut or flared jeans are the perfect trousers to wear with ankle boots with extra slimming results: the boot-cut allows you to hide your ankle boots under the pants, thus creating a vertical line that stretches your figure out.
A wide trouser that flutters at half-length (as on the left) is not only totally tasteless – even in the pants itself is faultless – but also has a widening effect.
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Left: ASOS DESIGN – Bell flare in high shine stretch satine
Right: Miss Selfridge – Skinny flare jeans (asos.com)
Also, don’t forget that if you want a taller-appearing figure, visually cutting off a few pounds, it’s essential to choose styles that are quite close-fitting without being too tight.
Conversely, if you choose excessively formfitting jeans or ones with a very wide leg, you get the result of shortening your figure while enlarging your legs—and indeed, your whole body.
Wide trousers, if not properly balanced out by very high heels, just take off inches in length while adding inches to the circumference. Wide trousers can have a slimming outcome only on those who are very tall because they can balance out the width with the length of the legs. But if you are not exactly tall, they can indeed be totally backfiring.
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Conversely, if you choose shaping fits and fabrics that highlight your curves instead of covering them and balance tights garments with looser ones you will surely get a lovely and very flattering outcome.
If you match a wide item to a more close-fitting one (for example, a soft pullover paired with skinny pants), you can get a visually slimming effect.
Pay attention, though, with garments that are excessively tight: choosing shaping garments that enhance your physical assets does not mean wearing clothing three sizes too small but rather finding the items that are just right for you. Extra-tight garments draw attention to any imperfection you may have and make you look less slender. Also, for those who are quite short-statured, wearing only formfitting garments will make your legs look shorter, as you can see in the image below on the left.
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Better to play around with proportions and contrasts, which allow you to modify the perception of the silhouette while flattering your whole body. This can be achieved by choosing close-fitting, but not too tight, garments.
In fact, if your clothes are too revealing, you cannot apply tricks of any kind. Conversely, carefully playing with fits and colors (as we will explain in detail in the next post), besides making you seem slimmer, will give you an interesting, elegant, and intriguing look.
