Kim Kardashian wearing Alexander McQueen's "Optical Illusion dress"

We all know that women prefer clothes which makes them look thin, emphasize their curves and enhance their figure. Spanx pantyhose, Wonderbras… You name it! But come on, no dress is really gonna take ten inches off your waist, or make you look twenty pounds lighter than you really are… Would it? Well, no ORDINARY dress would be able to do that!

But when designers discover fabulous world of optical illusions, and then start playing with such concepts, you’d be amazed what they could do to the female figure… only sky is the limit!

Take the dress on the right for example – simply by adding a well-known optical illusion pattern to the waist, the designer Alexander McQueen suddenly makes any woman wearing his dress appear much thinner in waist than she really is. Not to mention how he successfully reversed the effect in the breasts region, accomplishing curvaceous, hourglass appearance!

Really?! Who Else Does This?

The next dress by Stella McCartney is another extreme example of what optical illusions can do to a woman’s body… Sure, it’s an easy task to emphasize Kim Kardashian’s curves, but what if you’re not as curvaceous?

Using a similar concept that slimmed down Kim in the first image, McCartney’s dress takes the illusion even further – By using a slightly off-white color fabric on the bust, the “shadow effect” makes woman’s breasts appear much larger, immediately putting them in the spotlight (something I’m sure most gentlemen wouldn’t be eager to complain about). But that’s not the only enhancement here!

Kate Winslet premiered Stella McCartney’s dress at the Venice Film Festival, and it was so noticeably figure-altering that it was quickly dubbed “The Optical Illusion Dress” by the press. You can immediately recognize the black-fabric-on-the-sides trick, one that made Kate look like a corset model from the 18th century. An hourglass figure so slim, that when compared to her mortal anatomy, it’s actually shocking…

So remember, optical illusions aren’t just theoretical creations used by artists. No, they are also quite practical when applied to real world settings by fashion designers who want to please their clientele by giving them an entirely new figure. Here are few more celebs wearing Stella McCartney’s dresses. Has it worked for all of them? You be the judge!

The inner picture now becomes a perfect rectangle! Be sure to check the #gif animation attached below for proof. It’s really strange how certain patterns can influence our perception of reality, do you agree?

This illusion was originally produced by Greeenpro2009, and you may see the video of it on Greeen’s youtube channel. I personally adore simple optical illusions (such as this one), specially when done professionally, and in such a visually appealing way. Goood job Greeenpro2009!

I also noticed one particular comment from few days back, suggesting I should allow you to rate posts from the homepage as well. Up until now, you were allowed to rate illusions only from inside the particular post. The reason I excluded homepage lyes in the fact that many of our posts are cut-off on the homepage. Many articles contain more than one photo, where only first one is visible on the starting page. Still, I tweaked the ratings so from now on you should also be able to vote from the homepage. Let’s see how this turns out…

The effect used is relatively simple, one we featured hundreds of times in our Seemingly Bent category. But this time you can see it in more interesting context. The bent lines represent the legs of two gentlemen.

Can you force yourself to see their legs perfectly straight? Even though they appear bent, in reality they’re 100% parallel and straight. If you haven’t realized by now, it’s the checkers background that makes this effect work! This optical illusion originally appeared in 1913, in “Popular Mechanics”.

BTW, hope you had a wonderful New Year’s eve, and I wish you all the best in 2011! Let’s hope our little community does even better than it did in 2010! This time last year I compiled my personal pick of Top 10 Optical Ilusions of 2009. I also did Year’s Recap in numbers. Expect something similar in days to come!

You should check the Checker Board video, and some other works by greeenpro2009 if you already haven’t – I promise you loads of professionally created content and interesting selection of illusions showcased.

Anyway, GreenProductions has created another awesome optical illusion video. I think it’s the same guy who presented us with Gray and White illusion from few days back. This time he gives us a final proof for them wavy spirals we posted in two parts. Be sure to check the Spiral tag, to see what I mean. I believe this vid’ should close the seemingly bent circles story once and for all.

I believe most of you are already well introduced to the pattern used in the video.  One of our categories – Seemingly Bent stuff, holds more than a dozen of examples where mentioned white squares were used to create optical illusion of bent lines. This video should be the first one placing mentioned illusion in center of attention. Check the embedded flick, and reply if you believe it adds some value to our collection.

Are these poles straight and parallel?

I’d like to thank you for your replies, yesterday. I learned some new things, but also got an affirmation to some of my previous beliefs. What I’m even more proud of, is that our little community has finally matured enough to lead a decent and polite conversation – even when your views differ. If I’m not mistaken, there weren’t any offensive comments yesterday, but I’ll double-check just in case. Hope you don’t mind me sharing my personal thoughts here and then, after all – some optical illusions speak for themselves. This gives me enough space to discuss topics I’m personally interested in. Btw, I have  implemented a pool poll beneath – Can’t wait to hear your thoughts on this:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Other thing I realized, is that as much as I strive to bring you newest real-life illusions, sometimes I forget that not all of you followed this blog from day one. Sometimes I need to be reminded that classic optical illusions are the ones that make strong foundations to this blog. In honor to them, I’ll post some classics ones in days to follow. Don’t be mistaken, none of them were posted before. They’ll still make a great illusion, yet with all my dedication to this site I somehow found them too repeating at some point. I probably forget you aren’t looking at all those illusion pictures on my drive each day, for hours and hours…