Long Tall Sally Reinvents Outdated Female Body Shapes To Champion Shape Diversity in Fashion

New data confirms the traditional body shapes - pear, apple, hourglass, rectangle and inverted triangle – do not reflect modern women

10 new body shape illustrations based on the new data supports the movement to expand body shape definitions, with inspirational names to encourage body positivity

According to research, 99% of women use negative words to describe their own body shape

The term ‘pear-shaped’ has been used to describe the female body since the 1800s, but new research from Long Tall Sally highlights how out-dated and unrepresentative the five standard body shapes are.

Long Tall Sally's research suggests that over 40.1 million women struggle to identify with any of the classic body shapes. Their in-depth analysis of body measurements from women in the UK and USA, reveals that that the reason for this is because the classic body shapes fail to account for how a woman’s height affects the shape of her body.

New Body Shapes Front Profile

The measurement data of 2,000 women – including their height, shoulder width, waist, hips, inside leg and torso length - was collected and analysed by a body expert to find the most common combinations of height and body part measurements. The expert team of Garment Technologists at Long Tall Sally then transformed these groupings of measurements to create a series of ten new body shapes. Together, these new body shapes champion diversity and showcase a more inclusive and representative range of contemporary women’s body heights and shapes.

One particularly striking element of the research is the astonishingly negative words that women use to describe their body shape, with 99% of participants using shaming terms, such as ‘an ugly mess’, ‘potato’, ‘repulsive’ and, the most popular adjective ‘fat’. Just 1% of women used positive descriptions such as ‘beautiful’, ‘strong’ and ‘perfect’.

In naming these new body shapes, and in a refreshing contrast to the prescriptive labels of yesterday, Long Tall Sally has adopted empowering adjectives based on the words that women use to describe other women; Extraordinary, Courageous, Inspiring, Determined, Passionate, Powerful, Graceful, Strong, Fearless and Invincible.

“Our research provides evidence that the traditional approach to body shape isn’t representative of modern women, and whilst the new shapes we’ve unveiled are by no means exhaustive, they demonstrate why the fashion industry needs to adopt a more inclusive stance and cater for a wider range of body types. As part of our #TrueToMySize campaign, the designers at Long Tall Sally will be using these new illustrations as a starting point to make sure the fit of our new fashion ranges suit a more inclusive set of body shapes.” Camilla Treharne, Creative Director at Long Tall Sally.

The new shapes take into account a woman’s height, as well as horizontal measurements, creating a far more accurate representation of the female body shapes. The Powerful body shape shows an average height, with wider shoulders and longer torso, whereas Extraordinary shapes are slightly taller, with wider hips, waist and bust. Body shapes with a shorter than average height, wider shoulders and hips are acknowledged as Inspiring (all pictured).

Fashion Director Alexandra Fullerton says of the campaign: ‘How refreshing that Long Tall Sally has taken steps to counterbalance these old-fashioned figures and reflect the diversity and evolution of women’s bodies. By discovering and decoding the measurements and proportions of 2000 women across the UK and US, and the fits offered to them, #TrueToMySize provides a far more inclusive set of shapes. When your clothes are designed to fit your body, getting dressed becomes easier. Good fit is the foundation of any stylish outfit and now there is acknowledgement of the reality of women’s bodies today, everyone can be one step closer to reaching style nirvana.’

For the full set of new body shape templates, and styling tips for each from Alexandra Fullerton visit: www.longtallsally.com/truetomysize

[ENDS]

NOTES TO EDITORS

All image assets are available in high res and can be downloaded from: https://we.tl/t-dAfshoE9om

The Ratio Issue of Body Shapes

The analysis of the body measurement data proved that a woman’s height does in fact impact her body shape, something that the established body shapes don’t take account for. The traditional body shapes, apple, pear, hourglass, inverted triangle and rectangle are created using two body ratios, based on three horizontal measurements taken from the bust, waist and hips.

A big problem with this kind of classification is that these ratios don’t account for vertical measurements. The new data from Long Tall Sally includes seven body measurements: the traditional bust, waist and hips; as well as three extra vertical measurements of height, inside leg and torso length, as well as a fourth horizontal measurement of shoulder width. Analysis of this comprehensive data set shows that reducing measurements to ratios overgeneralises body shapes, missing the nuances of how height and other vertical body measurements affect body shape.

Instead of looking at ratios, Long Tall Sally’s analysis looked at groupings of women who shared similar combinations of the seven body measurements, revealing at least 13 distinct clusters, of which ten were distinct enough to illustrate as fashion templates. The body shape clusters from Long Tall Sally are truly representative of the women surveyed, with between 100 – 200 women falling into each group.

Of the participants who fit the Long Tall Sally customer profile of 5’8” or taller, it was found that 40% were in the ‘Extraordinary’ body shape cluster, with the remaining participants spread between six of the other groupings.

Survey conducted of 2,000 UK and USA based women in November 2018 by Censuswide

40.1 million women based on a 20% population representative. Female population data sources:

UK: 33,557,938

US: 167,160,856

Source: Countrymeters.info

About Long Tall Sally

Long Tall Sally is the world leader in fashion and footwear for tall women. With 10 websites shipping to over 190 countries in the past 12 months, the brand is the global destination where style starts at 5’8” and UK shoe size 7. Designing each piece in house for the perfect tall fit, Long Tall Sally is the first choice of tall women worldwide.

PRESS CONTACTS

Propellernet

Stephanie Finch, PR Consultant: stephanie@propellernet.co.uk

01273 763 634

Long Tall Sally

Lauren Smoothy, PR & Communications Lead: lsmoothy@longtallsally.co.uk