The Pear, and the cuts that follow from it.

A pear gives clothes two narrow places to hold on to and one wide line to get past.

The shoulder and the waist are where a garment can sit close and take its shape; the seat and the top of the thigh are where it has to pass with room. Everything on the lists below follows from three rules about those places.

Below the waist, room comes first. A skirt or trouser needs more cloth over the seat than its waistband suggests, cut into the pattern or given by stretch in the fabric. Without it, the size that closes at your waist pulls across your hip, and the size that clears your hip stands away at the back of the waist. So the pear's rules turn down any bottom cut without room over the curve and the thigh, however well it is styled.

Above the waist the job runs the other way, toward width. A padded shoulder, a boat neck or the structured shoulder of a trench takes the top of the frame out toward the line of the hip, so the two ends read as one shape. Most pear advice works on the lower half only, which is why so much of it reads like an apology. Building the shoulder line asks nothing of the hip, and it moves the balance further than any skirt can.

The third rule is where an edge lands. A hem or a waistband that stops on your widest line draws a horizontal across it, and the cloth above has to stretch to get over the curve. End above it, at the waist: a tucked top, a knit that stops at the belt, a jacket belted shut. Or end below it, clear of the seat: a long coat, a midi skirt. Room below, width above, no edge on the widest line: the cards below are the catalog sorted by those three.

Pear is a statement about width and nothing else. It says your hips outmeasure your shoulders; it says nothing about whether your shoulder turns a corner or slopes away, whether bone shows at your wrist and jaw, whether your features read angular or rounded. That is your line, which the analysis reads from your photos and answers as sharp, medium or soft, and every line turns up on a pear.

A cut needs both readings. Your shape says the shoulder needs width and the lower half room; your line says how that width is built, with a hard edge or a soft one, in cloth that holds its shape or cloth that drapes.

So three pears with the same measurements get three different jackets. A sharp line builds the shoulder with structure, the padded-shoulder blazer or a trench. A medium line takes the width from the neckline, a boat neck under a belted coat. A soft line gets the soft-shoulder fitted blazer over a wrap top, because a hard pad on a rounded frame sits there like a borrowed jacket. Underneath, all three can wear the same trousers: room and rise answer to the body, which is why the table gives the bottoms one row.

The cards above are already sorted for what makes a pear a pear, the width at the hip and the thigh, which is why every bottom on the Wear list has room cut into it.

Three more details change this page the most.

• Your rise. Your page settles on one rise from your answer about torso and legs: high if you carry a longer torso or shorter legs, mid otherwise. Every trouser at another rise is a Skip, so the high-rise wide above is yours only at a high rise; the light flare, not cut to a set rise, stays either way. In the sample analysis, a men's trapezoid with a mid rise, the men's high-rise wide-leg trousers come back Skip: "The wide leg starts from a waistband set at the wrong rise for you."
• A fuller bust. It refuses a crop, whose hem ends too close to the fullest part of the chest, and a stiff fitted top. On this page that takes out the cropped cardigan.
• Your shoulders. Narrow shoulders count in favor of a sharp padded shoulder, so the padded-shoulder blazer gains. Broad shoulders refuse it outright, even on a pear whose hips are wider still.

The rules for a rounded midsection and a plus-size frame work the same way, one detail at a time, and every cut on your page comes back Wear, Depends or Skip with the reason it landed there.