Fashion, body and geometry in the twentieth century

Abstract

Fashion experts classify the morphology of the female body using simple and composite geometric shapes, which can also be used to classify the resulting silhouette after dressing a woman. Looking closely at the main fashion trends that have governed the twentieth century, there are three groups according to the resulting silhouettes: the hourglass figure, made with two opposing triangles; the cylinder, and the inverted triangle. But if we analyze in detail the times in which they occurred, we discover that each represents and determines a particular female model with a distinct way of being and of interacting with males in the temporal context. Given these facts, we address the question of whether these associations are still active today, at a time when, as a result of the paradigm shift of Postmodernism, inverted pillars and structures of our thinking have undergone radical change.