How To Wear Ruffles And Still Look Stylish
Ruffles, when designed well and worn in the right environment, create a dreamy and delicate look, one of relaxing on a breezy summer day. When not designed well and when worn in the wrong environment, they can end up making you look like you dove into cake frosting where the butter and liquid have split and curdled. If you spot something with ruffles and want to wear it while avoiding that caked-up look, you need to understand what ruffles do and what varieties exist. It is totally possible to wear a ruffle dress and other clothing with ruffles and look very stylish.
The Location of the Ruffles Matters
Most important is the location of the ruffles because they make whatever they cover seem a lot bigger. A blouse with a ruffled bottom hem will make your waist or hips look wider. That may be fine with you; after all, making your hips look bigger can make you look curvier, which is great if that's the look you're going for. A dress with tiers of ruffles all the way down each sleeve is going to make your arms look wider, and so on. Pay close attention to where the ruffles are. Wide doesn't equal bad, but it can cause you to look misproportioned, with parts of your body seeming much wider than other parts.
The Direction Also Matters
Because ruffles will make whatever they cover seem bigger, they'll make whatever they cover seem wider or taller. A ruffled skirt with multiple tiers of ruffles running horizontally around the skirt may make the silhouette of your legs seem wider than you realize. If you're very well-endowed up top, an off-both-shoulders dress with ruffles running horizontally across the very top may make you look a lot bigger there than you'd like. And a vertical ruffle running the length of a dress may give the initial impression that you look taller.
Loose Versus Tight Ruffles
Ruffles don't have to be curly, tight things that stick out of the clothing. They can be loose, drapey ruffles, such as in those simple ruffle sleeves you can see on dresses in movies from the 1930s. Loose, fairly flat ruffles also look nice on V-neck blouses if the material is soft and the ruffles are the same color as the rest of the blouse. The tighter the ruffles and the more they stick out, the "younger" the clothing will appear. This doesn't mean you'll look like a five-year-old if you wear them, but it does mean those ruffles should be reserved for times when you want to appear more carefree. For example, take a gauzy floral ruffle dress where the ruffles form a small ridge around an off-the-shoulder neckline. That's not a dress for an office Christmas party, obviously, but it is one that you could wear to a daytime brunch held outdoors in spring.
Big Versus Small
If the ruffles visually overwhelm the rest of the dress, they are too big. This is acceptable if you're going to a 1980s costume party but not that acceptable if you're trying to look like a delicate sylph wandering through a Parisian garden. If the dress you want to wear has ruffles that are on the larger side, such as ruffle sleeves that hang to about mid-upper arm, make sure those ruffles contribute to the overall look of the dress without overwhelming it. They should be a nice touch, not the main feature.
Contact a company like Lux Life Brands to learn more.