Line Illusions in Fashion Design

Hello Everyone,

If you are a fashion designer, and especially if you create custom designs, you should know how to emphasize the most attractive body lines. Fashion designers use many tricks to achieve this goal. One of these tricks is a visual illusion evoked by certain lines. A line refers to the edge of the garment outline and style lines of the garment. Let’s review how vertical, horizontal, or diagonal lines affect garment design.

Vertical lines can create an illusion of a slenderer figure. Style lines, contrast color insertions, a textile pattern, a long jacket of contrast color, a long scarf, a long thread of beads, and so on could serve as vertical lines.

This rule has an exception: if there are many vertical lines, they will visually widen the figure. For example, wide vertical stripes can make the figure seem larger in size.

The vertical line effect can be stronger if you use an embellishment along the style line, for example, piping or embroidery. You can play with color or color value as well, for example, make a center front detail darker.

Horizontal lines visually make the figure seem wider. However, many horizontal lines (narrow stripes, for example) will make the figure to seem slender and taller. The opposite, wide contrast stripes will make the figure seem wider and shorter.

Examples of horizontal line illusions: avoid to create horizontal style line at the widest part of the figure, avoid to put a skirt hem at the thickest part of legs, a jacket hem shouldn’t be at the widest part of the hips and so on.

A diagonal line elongates a figure if it crosses the entire garment. The slope of the diagonal line should be close to vertical in this case. Diagonal lines can elongate body parts as well, for example, the V-neck line elongates the neck visually.

Usually line combination gives the desired visual effect.

Compare several schematic dress illustrations in the picture below.

It is very interesting to experiment with various lines while designing a new outfit. If you place a photo of your client or model into an Adobe Illustrator file, you can experiment drawing style lines or garment details straight on the figure. This technique can help to develop the best look for the particular figure.

You can learn how to draw in Adobe Illustrator CC by reading my e-textbook "The Craft of Garment Design with Adobe Illustrator".