The Rule Of Thirds

There are a few styling tricks we have learnt over the years that we subconsciously utilise each day to help us get dressed. One of those is the rule of thirds that’s derived from a more well known theory, the golden ratio.

Used in art and architecture, the rule of thirds encourages you to divide your canvas, or in this case our body, up into thirds. We might think we split our outfit into two zones, a top a bottom, but the rule of two thirds challenges us to think about our outfits a little differently and if utilised we can tap into what science believes we intrinsically view as more aesthetically pleasing, or in our case, outfits that make us feel our best!

So how do we apply this rule to our outfits?

Looking at yourself in the mirror, find the middle mark of your body. Most commonly this will be somewhere just below your hips and around your bottom. If we drew a horizontal line here it’s also most likely going to be the widest part of our body, and we want to avoid creating this line with our clothes. Instead we want to create a longer two thirds section and shorter one third section.

High waist pants and skirts are a great way to create a longer ⅔ leg, and a top that is tucked in or cropped will create the ⅓. We also don’t mind this reversed, using a longer shirt worn loose over a relaxed trouser or loose jeans, or an open jacket over a midi dress.

Also take into account your exposed skin as this can create balance to your thirds. You know that styling rule about if you have your legs out, maybe think about covering your arms? Rule of thirds.

You can also look at this concept in terms of colour palette as it ties into another key styling rule we love to draw on, the 3 colour rule.

At first you might think rules like these are a little outdated, but it turns out we’re drawing on concepts like this one everyday whether we’re conscious of it or not. And when we’re in one of those moods where none of our outfits feel quite right, it’s good to have a couple of styling structures in our back pocket to refer to.