A Guide To Women's Shorts

In this video, the image adviser for Colour Me Beautiful, Mandy Lehto teaches women how to wear shorts depending on whether they have curves on the lower half of the body or not. Enlarge

A Guide To Women's Shorts

In this video, the image adviser for Colour Me Beautiful, Mandy Lehto teaches women how to wear shorts depending on whether they have curves on the lower half of the body or not.

I am going to talk to you how to choose variety of shorts. The first thing to look for is whether you have curves on the lower half of your body or whether you've got straight line on lower half of the body. So, those of you who have curves on the lower half, there will be a little more fullness on the hip, there will be a bottom.

Somebody who is straighter on the lower half will have quite straight hips and might have quite a slack bottom. So starting with that shape, if we look out what shorts are better for straight lower body, what you can do there is choose styles of shorts that are actually bulky here around the hip and bottom area to give you that shape around here. So you might go for something like that, so the fabric is a little bit heavier, there is detail in here which will add bulk to this part of the leg.

The way that you might style up something like that, you might wear that with a pair of tights and black ankle boots; in the winter time, that could be quite a nice look. You can choose patrons on the lower half of the body which will bring the eye down and give shape to the hips and bottom or any shorts like these that have quite a bit of detailing on the bottom half - pockets, lots of turn-ups, zippers, bulk around the hip and bottom area or you could actually go for a bright colour. So this type of body shape, what we're trying to do with flat hips and bottom is to draw the eye down to this area so that is your playground, lots of detailing, lots of bulk, what is going on on that particular area, so whether it's pattern, colour, turn-ups, pockets, detailing.

You might also go for pockets that have Dia Monte, that type of thing. We want to draw the eye down if the hips and bottom are straight. If you got a curvier bottom, what you want to do is choose fabrics that have a little bit of give to them.

So if you are choosing denim shorts, we notice how soft they are. There is a little bit of give and lasting in this denim which will tend to fall nicely around the curves of hips and the bottom. It would be very, very mindful, if you have a curvy lower half where exactly the shorts end on the leg.

We don't want the shorts ending at the fullest part of the leg. So you might go for something quite flattering in that area just above the knee. There is bermuda shorts.

These are a little bit short for bermudas but that bermuda length works really ,really well on full lower body. You might also go for slightly softer looking shorts. So this looks like a skort which is a hybrid of a short and an orange skirt.

There's that skirt feel to it. This is good for somebody with a waist so if you got a full lower body and you got waist, looking for that waist shaping and then it just skims nicely over the hip and finish with a very flattering part of the leg. If you're looking for something a little bit more tailored and you've got a curvy lower half, you might look for a tailor short which does have a waist which is brilliant if you got waist shaping, but notice a side from the slash pocket to the complete absence of detailing around the hip and bottom area .

It's very flat, it's very straight forward, very basic. What we want to do is draw attention to the waist if you have one, and also looking for fabrics that have elastin and have give that will go nicely over the hips and bottom. These could be styled up as could the cool outs be styled up in a slightly more formal setting depending on the kind of shoe that you are wearing and ideally, these end on the flattering part of the leg preferably just above the knee.

If you wear them in a more formal setting, you might do those with a slight heel, maybe wedge ,you might do them with flat sandals. If you're going for the slightly more tailored look, I would bear that in mind to choosing your accessories. If you're going for the softer look, you could do that again with the wedge heel, you could do that with a flat shoe, but this has less of a smart