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Horizontal stripes, not vertical, make
you look thinner
London: The
most popular fashion advice - that vertical stripes flatter
the figure - is a myth, according to a leading perception
expert who says that wearing horizontal lines can actually
make a person look thinner. Contrary to popular belief, stripes
that run across the body are more slimming than supposedly
flattering vertical stripes, according to the research by
Peter Thompson of the University of York. The study was based
on the Helmholtz square illusion, created by 19th century
scientist Hermann von Helmholtz who drew two identically sized
squares and put vertical stripes on one and horizontal stripes
on the other. That experiment showed the square with the horizontal
stripes appeared taller and thinner than the other square,
prompting Helmholtz to recommend ladies wore horizontal stripes
to make them look taller. To reach his conclusion, the expert
asked people to compare more than 200 pairs of pictures of
women wearing horizontally and vertically striped dresses.
He then asked them to say, in each case, which of the two
they thought was fatter. His experiment revealed that when
the two women were the same size, the one wearing the horizontal-striped
dress appeared to people to be the thinner of the two. And
to make the women appear to be the same size, the one wearing
the horizontal stripes had to be six per cent wider. "We carried
out a number of experiments both with squares and oblongs
and pictures of women wearing horizontal and vertical stripes,"
Telegraph quoted Dr Thompson, as saying. "Horizontal stripes
don't make you look fat. The one wearing the vertical stripes
looks wider than the one wearing the horizontal stripes. "Horizontal
stripes, if anything, make you look thinner," he added. Dr
Thompson said it was not clear why the visual illusion existed,
although it could be that the horizontal stripes made an image
more 3D and introducing depth could reduce width.
-Sept 14, 2008
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