For a Great Fit, Start at the Shoulder

摘要

Your shoulders are like a clothes hanger: Every top, jacket, and dress you put on hangs from them. If you want your clothes to look better on you than on a hanger, you need to perfect the fit in the shoulders. Basically, you need to match the garment's shoulder slope to yours. The slope of the shoulders is the angle starting below your ear at the base of the neck to the shoulder point—in other words, from where a short necklace would fall at the side of the neck to where you'd like the seam of a set-in sleeve to lie. If your shoulders are more square or more slanted than the garment's, you'll see evidence everywhere, from the neckline to the upper chest, the back, the sleeves, and even the hemline. In this article, we show you how to pinpoint your shoulder-slope problems and to trace the silhouette of your body to make a master template of the shoulder area. We then demonstrate how to use the shoulder template to alter garment patterns.