So this is what the Sales Associate at the Herve Leger boutique taught me:
We all know that in terms of fit, an HL dress should be pretty darn tight, so that it stretches and pulls us in. We basically stretch the dress as we close it. Well, what I didn't know (and some of you probably did, but it was new to me), is that the dress basically has to be stretched vertically too! It was almost like the reverse of pulling up stockings, where the SA was sort-of stretching the dress down over me bit by bit.
I tried it when I got home with a dress I already have, and it made a huge difference! Here are pics:
The left-most pics are how I would wear the dress pre-lesson. It's a great dress, and it looks good I think. But there's a little bit of gathering near the waist. And my torso looks really short because that top part of my hips isn't being smoothed out much. The right-most pics are with the dress adjusted down. Here are the big differences:
- See how the black part is further down? It gives me more cleavage and a little extra lift to the chest.
- The fabric at the waist is smooth now.
- My torso overall looks longer because my hips are smoothed a little more.
- And if you look at the side pictures, you can see that the pulled-down version is doing more for my tummy - it smoothes the tummy a bit more.
- And the dress looks longer! So now I'll have to buy another shorter dress for when I want to show off my legs.
Anyway, it's a really simple idea, but it made such a big difference that I wanted to share, and include pics. I tried 3 dress on in the store, and it made a huge difference on 2 of them. Only 1 of the dresses didn't need the pull-down adjustment.