The Drop Waist

The waist has come down to the hip and been left unmarked, the shoulder is soft and slightly rounded, the hem runs long and narrow and lands flat on a flat brown shoe, and the bag is small and carried by a top handle at the end of your arm. There is one brass buckle in the outfit and no other hardware. You are dressing in the proportion currently on the floor of every good shop in the city, and you got there first.

It is a genuinely handsome year. Dropping the waist and lengthening the hem does for the body what the bias cut did in 1997 without asking anyone to wear silk to the grocery store, the flat shoe has finally been made properly rather than apologetically, and brown has done more work in the last eighteen months than black did in five years.

Now the unpleasant part, which is the whole reason this quiz exists. Being current is not a taste, it is a subscription, and it lapses. Every other person on this list is holding a proportion they chose and defended, and you are holding one you were handed in February. Ask yourself which of these six shapes you would still be wearing in 2031 if nobody sold you another one. If the answer is none of them, you do not have a year yet.