The five body shapes

What these categories are for

They come from pattern drafting, not from anatomy. A garment pattern has to make assumptions about where a body needs room, and these five describe the common cases. That is the entire purpose of the system, and it is worth knowing before reading anything else about it.

Which means a shape that ready-to-wear serves badly is a drafting assumption failing rather than a body failing to cooperate. The rectangle shape is the clearest example: patterns assume a waist reduction it does not have, so clothes that fit the bust gape at the waist. Nothing about the body is unusual; the assumption is.

The two questions

Are bust and hip in balance? Within five percent either way counts as balanced. Outside it, whichever is larger names the shape — hip for a pear, bust for an inverted triangle.

Does the waist draw in? A waist at least a quarter smaller than the narrower of bust and hip is conventionally called defined. With balance and definition together you get an hourglass; with balance and no definition, a rectangle.

There is one case ahead of both: if the waist measures the same as or more than bust and hip, the result is oval regardless of anything else.

All five

• Hourglass

  Bust and hip within five percent of each other, with a waist that draws in sharply from both.

  Example: 92–68–94 cm.

• Pear (triangle)

  The hip measures more than five percent above the bust, so the silhouette widens downward.

  Example: 88–72–100 cm. Also called triangle, spoon.

• Inverted triangle

  The bust or shoulder measures more than five percent above the hip, so the silhouette narrows downward.

  Example: 100–78–90 cm. Also called apple-shouldered, athletic.

• Rectangle (straight)

  Bust and hip in balance with a waist that does not draw in sharply from either.

  Example: 90–78–92 cm. Also called straight, banana.

• Oval

  The waist measures the same as or more than the bust and hip, so the silhouette is fullest through the middle.

  Example: 95–97–96 cm. Also called apple, round.

How to take the three measurements

A soft tape, held level and snug without compressing. All three are circumferences measured around the body, unlike the face measurements elsewhere on this site, which are straight-line distances.

Bust. Around the fullest part, with the tape level at the back. This is the measurement most often taken wrongly, because the tape rides up behind — it is worth checking in a mirror or having someone else read it.

Waist. Around the narrowest part of the torso, which is usually an inch or so above the navel rather than at it. If there is no obvious narrowest point, measure at the level of the bottom rib; that is the convention, and it is also part of the answer.

Hip. Around the fullest part, which is generally lower than people expect — around seven or eight inches below the waist rather than at the hip bone. Measuring at the bone instead of the fullest point is the commonest reason a pear reads as a rectangle.

Take each three times and use the middle value. Repeated readings expose a tape that is slipping or tilting far better than care on a single one does, and the classification turns on differences of a few percent.

Why the boundaries are softer than they look

Both thresholds are lines through a continuum. Five percent separates balanced from unbalanced, and twenty-five percent separates a defined waist from a straighter one — but a body at twenty-four percent and one at twenty-six are described by different words while measuring nearly the same.

The calculator reports the actual percentages alongside the category for exactly this reason. If your waist draws in by twenty-four percent, the useful fact is the twenty-four, not the label that number happened to fall under.

What this does not do

It does not measure weight, calculate BMI, or make any health claim — nor could it, since three circumferences cannot support one. It does not rank the five or present any of them as preferable. And it has nothing to say about what anyone should wear; the guidance on each page is about how cloth hangs, which is a question about cloth.

The calculator takes three tape measurements and shows every ratio and threshold behind the result. Nothing is uploaded.

These categories are garment-fitting shorthand, not a taxonomy of people. Bodies vary continuously and the boundaries are lines drawn through that variation — a waist reduction of 24% and one of 26% are called different things while describing much the same body.