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California State University, Fullerton

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The hourglass is one of four female body shapes. The other shapes are the rectangular, inverted triangle, and spoon. The hourglass shape is defined as a woman whose body measurements, the circumference of the bust, waist, and hips, are a wide bust, a narrow waist, and a wide hip that has similar measurements to that of the bust. This body shape is aptly named for its resemblance to that of an hour glass where the upper and lower half are wide while the portion at middle is narrow in circumference making the ratio wide-narrow-wide.

Hourglass Figure and The Corset

In the mid to late 1800s, during the Victorian era, the hourglass corset was used to accentuate the hourglass body shape that had become popular and ideal. It acted on the waist by compressing and reducing the size of the woman’s waist by force. The corset is iconic with the image of a woman being helped by her maids. The maids are pulling on strings at the back of the woman’s corset in order to tighten it and reduce the size of the wearer’s waist. The hourglass corset varied and developed as time passed but the design and intention of the corset remained the same at the core – the reduction of the waist line in order to create the ideal hourglass body shape where the bust and hips were similar in measurement while being much wider than the narrow waist.

Hourglass Figure and Plus-Size In The Fashion Industry

The hourglass figure is perhaps the most prominent body shapes out of the four as well as being the iconic body shape in the fashion industry. Such fashion designers as Christian Dior has designed clothes with specifically the female hourglass body shape in mind. Fashion designers of today continue to design clothes that fit the hourglass body shape even when the body shapes of modern women are changing and becoming much more varied. Even now when plus-size is included in the fashion industry as well as being more commonly produced by various groups of clothing designers, the hourglass size is a great influence on the design of plus-sized clothes. Models of the plus size clothing still retain that hourglass figure albeit bigger than the models of regular clothing. Research surveys conducted in Britain by the University College London and the London College of Fashion found that less than 10% of women had an hourglass body shape. The smooth and narrow waist continues to dominate in fashion designs meant to cater to plus-size women even when that particular body shape, the hourglass, is not commonly found. Although the fashion designs have remained relatively untouched, the reality is that women’s bodies are changing and modernistic fashion body shape ideals, primarily the hourglass body shape, are extremely uncommon for the average woman to have.