How to look taller

What actually moves it

Height reads as a ratio rather than a measurement: where your waistband sits decides how much of you is leg, and almost everything else on this page is a consequence of that one fact.

8 rules in the table produce this effect: 5 in your favour, the largest worth +14, and 3 against, the largest worth -18. The deltas are what each is worth at full strength against a neutral garment, and they add, so one rule pulling -18 is not undone by two small ones pulling the other way.

• A mid-to-high rise lifts the waistline toward the natural waist and lengthens the leg line. (+14, whatever your shape, at 163cm and with a long torso) [high-rise-lengthens]
• By the usual convention: height carries width, so a wide leg reads deliberate rather than borrowed. (+7, whatever your shape, at 188cm) [wide-leg-tall-frame]
• By the usual convention: a tall frame has the length to carry oversized volume properly. (+7, whatever your shape, at 188cm) [oversized-tall-frame]
• Long legs give you the room to wear a lower rise without losing the line. (+6, whatever your shape, with long legs) [long-leg-can-take-low-rise]
• A substantial sole adds real height and anchors a wider trouser. (+6, whatever your shape, at 163cm) [chunky-sole-short]

What works against it

The same table, read for what it penalises. The most expensive thing you can do to this goal is worth -18 on its own, which is past the ten points that move a garment from "depends" to "skip": a low rise drops the waistline and shortens the leg. Of every proportion rule, this is the one worth protecting.

None of these are keyed to a shape. They read your height, your torso-to-leg split and your bone scale, which is why the answer can be firm without anyone knowing what shape you are.

• A low rise drops the waistline and shortens the leg. Of every proportion rule, this is the one worth protecting. (-18, whatever your shape, at 163cm and with a long torso) [low-rise-short-leg-line]
• By the usual convention: oversized volume swallows a shorter frame instead of draping on it. (-12, whatever your shape, at 163cm) [oversized-short-frame]
• By the usual convention: wide legs eat height on a shorter frame unless the rise is high and the hem breaks clean. (-11, whatever your shape, at 163cm) [wide-leg-short-frame]

Where it depends, and on what

4 garments here are argued in both directions by the rules on this page, and a low rise is the widest of them: +6 at one end and -18 at the other. That is the answer, not a failure to give one.

None of these rules stack: no garment we probe trips two of them on the same body at the same build, so every number on this page is one rule acting alone.

None of these rules ask what shape you are, and all of them ask how tall you are and where your torso ends. A tall frame gets the opposite advice from most of them, which is why generic height advice is so often wrong for the person reading it.

• Low-rise jeans: +6 whatever your shape, with long legs.
• Low-rise jeans: -18 whatever your shape, at 163cm and with a long torso.
• Oversized shirts: +7 whatever your shape, at 188cm.
• Oversized shirts: -12 whatever your shape, at 163cm.
• Boxy jackets: +7 whatever your shape, at 188cm.
• Boxy jackets: -12 whatever your shape, at 163cm.
• Wide-leg trousers: +7 whatever your shape, at 188cm.
• Wide-leg trousers: -11 whatever your shape, at 163cm.

Every rule, with the number it carries

The full set, ours and the ones that contradict it, with ids so you can hold us to them. A rule from geometry is stated flat; one that rests on convention is marked as convention, because "this is how it is done here" and "this is how it works" are different claims.

2 of them never argued at full volume on the builds tested: wide-leg-tall-frame carries +7 and landed +4.2. Every rule is graded by how firmly the body sits inside the label that fired it, so a body near a threshold gets a quieter version of the same opinion rather than the full one, and the delta is the ceiling rather than the reading.

Every rule here was demonstrated on a real garment in the list above, so nothing on this page is a claim we could not fire.

• A mid-to-high rise lifts the waistline toward the natural waist and lengthens the leg line. (+14, whatever your shape, at 163cm and with a long torso) [high-rise-lengthens]
• A low rise drops the waistline and shortens the leg. Of every proportion rule, this is the one worth protecting. (-18, whatever your shape, at 163cm and with a long torso) [low-rise-short-leg-line]
• Long legs give you the room to wear a lower rise without losing the line. (+6, whatever your shape, with long legs) [long-leg-can-take-low-rise]
• By the usual convention: wide legs eat height on a shorter frame unless the rise is high and the hem breaks clean. (-11, whatever your shape, at 163cm) [wide-leg-short-frame]
• By the usual convention: height carries width, so a wide leg reads deliberate rather than borrowed. (+7, whatever your shape, at 188cm) [wide-leg-tall-frame]
• By the usual convention: oversized volume swallows a shorter frame instead of draping on it. (-12, whatever your shape, at 163cm) [oversized-short-frame]
• By the usual convention: a tall frame has the length to carry oversized volume properly. (+7, whatever your shape, at 188cm) [oversized-tall-frame]
• A substantial sole adds real height and anchors a wider trouser. (+6, whatever your shape, at 163cm) [chunky-sole-short]

Whose body this is, in our terms

No rule on this page asks what shape you are, so there is no one shape page to send you to. All seven are below instead, because these rules fire on every one of them, and each of those pages shows them sitting alongside the rules that are keyed to the shape.

Each of those pages runs the same rules across seven builds rather than one, which is where a number that moves with your height stops being an average and becomes your number.

• A straight up-and-down build, also called a straight build or an H-shape: what we call a rectangle.
• Narrow shoulders and wider hips, also called a pear shape or an A-shape: what we call a triangle.
• Broad shoulders, also called a V-shaped build or an athletic build: what we call an inverted triangle.
• An average, balanced build, also called an athletic build or a proportional build: what we call a trapezoid.
• A fuller middle, also called an apple shape or a round build: what we call an oval.
• A defined waist, also called an hourglass shape or an X-shape: what we call an hourglass.
• Wider hips with a defined waist, also called a pear shape with a nipped waist or hips wider than the shoulders: what we call a spoon.