Pageant Gowns: Secret Styling Tips
While everyone wants to be noticed at their special occasion event, beauty and fashion competitions such as Miss America, Miss USA, Project Runway, and the like, require a unique skill set. Following are tips from the Gown Guru Robin Fleming, Founder of La Casa Hermosa, an internationally-known gown showroom, for how to look your best and capture the crown or trophy, using her secret styling techniques to influence a judging panel.
Height and figure proportion are two key elements of any stage presence, and styling techniques that harness these elements correctly, increase the odds of winning a fashion or beauty event. Height has long been considered a psychological factor in how successful an individual may be with respect to opportunities, wealth, perceived beauty, and other positive attributes.
Pageant Gown Styling Tips
Regardless of your actual height, petite to statuesque, you want to appear as tall as possible, in proportion to your fellow competitors. Proportion is key for all body types, as simply being the tallest girl on stage, or appearing to be the tallest, does not provide you with any competitive advantage. In fact, overly tall is as much a visual hindrance as overly petite, so proportion coupled with the appearance of height, and not actual height itself, is what creates a powerful onstage presence. Good news for all sizes!
A quick way to appear inches taller is to elevate the line of sight for an observer or judge. The dictionary definition of the line-of-sight is an imaginary line from the eye to a perceived object. For our purposes, I define the line of sight as where the casual observer’s eye is drawn to look at most often. For example, empire waist treatments on evening gowns create the ‘legs for miles’ effect, keeping the sight line elevated to where seam meets bust. Gowns with seaming at mid-thigh will do the opposite, which is useful to know if you are disproportionately tall. Using the ‘line of sight’ technique will allow YOU to control the visual information, and predetermine where the judges look, while you are onstage in your evening gown.
Another styling tip for standing taller in an evening gown is to make sure the gown hemline brushes the stage floor at least 1/8 of an inch past the sole of your shoe heel, completely covering the shoe heel. When judges see footwear on stage, the optical information immediately shortens the perceived distance between foot and face, losing you inches, and possibly a chance at the crown. Using this technique, adding inches would also be high neck treatments on gowns, one shoulder designs, and collared gowns, in essence, any gown style that extends the design from floor to finish at the face
The Pageant Gown Illusion
The universal standard of female beauty is the hourglass figure, creating the illusion of that shape if you’ve not been blessed from birth, is easily accomplished by use of vertical and diagonal seams and treatments. Proportion is defined primarily by your waist-to-hip ration. The waist-to-hip ration is a numerical ratio, (WHR) and it does not matter whether a person is thick or slender, the ideal relation should approximate 0.7. This value is calculated by dividing the waist circumference by the hip circumference. Once you have your WHR, you can begin to use styling techniques to camouflage any flaws.
For example, if you need to minimize your bust, a one-shoulder gown treatment is most effective. A one shoulder line slims broad shoulders, adds ‘height’ inches, and aligns the bust with the hipline. If you want to minimize your hip line, you would use an A line skirting to increase the ratio of hemline radius, which in turn creates the optical illusion of a smaller hip.
When wardrobe styling factors in your unique physical attributes in the most flattering way, you become the most compelling visual presence on stage. Using the appropriate styling techniques to enhance your image is critically important for pageant contestants who wish to differentiate themselves from their competition, and ultimately capture the crown.
What Not to Wear host Clinton Kelly hosted a Miss America special, titled, Miss America: Behind the Curtain, taking viewers behind the scenes of the pageant and serving up details about the contestants. Featured on Miss America: Behind the Curtain was La Casa Hermosa evening gowns specially designed for beauty pageant competitions. La Casa Hermosa is an internationally recognized evening gown apparel showroom in South Florida known for ‘The Most Beautiful Gowns in The House’. La Casa Hermosa dresses pageant contestants for all pageant systems, and has dressed hundreds of winners around the world.
