(It's also one that, for the first time in my blogging history, made me want to go all silly puns with the title. I've stayed my hand.)
Re-measuring myself some time ago (it's now been several years - this is a post rescued from "development hell"), I found out a head-scratching thing:
At the largest part of my hips, my front measurement is bigger than my back measurement. That wouldn't be so head-scratching maybe; the head-scratching part comes from the facts that:
A) my hip-to-waist ratio is noticeably on the hourglass side, which one
usually thinks of as "fluffy tissue on one's backside";
B) fitting tutorials dealing with bigger volume in the front assume volume
in the belly; which is in center front and, once again, fluffy tissue;
C) meanwhile, my additional volume in the front is in my hip bones. That means I have volume at
the side-front. Not an area you usually see dealt with in trouser-fitting
tutorials. :P Conversely, I actually have a bit of a hollow space behind my hip bones at
my sides.
The difference was about 4 cm some years ago when I first came across this problem. That's a lot of hip bone for an area of the body where the difference is usually in the back.
Seriously, I don't think I've EVER come across anyone approaching this as a
fitting issue in explanations of fitting issues and how to fix them.
(Also, because it’s a bone issue, I think it’s a good thing I haven’t attempted
a custom dress form yet, because that may well distort with
stuffing. I will have to come up with some way to simulate my bone structure because one of the reasons I want a custom dress form is for it to be squishable for corsets. And its being squishable in places where I'm not - which is frankly most of them - would defeat the purpose.)
It goes a long way towards explaining some of my trouser woes. I have noticed that generally, trousers that fit me best in the hip area are actually often men's trousers (except then they gape awfully at the waist).
In historical costuming terms, most of the time I thankfully don't have to worry
about it, because skirts. But because the re-measuring happened because of
hypothetical future corsets, I came to wonder, how exactly do I deal with that
in longer corsets? It's bone. It won't squish.
It's mostly something I'll have to experiment with on my own, I’m afraid. But
I wanted to share it. In case there are actually other "curvy" women with bone
structure interfering with the fit of their clothes, rather than being "fat"; and yes, to stress the
importance of measuring oneself thoroughly.
