To Shoulder Pad or Not to Shoulder Pad...

I'm plonked, but if someone wants to quote me, Dana can see this.

It seems to me that Dana is a good candidate for shoulder pads. It's people like me who end up looking like football players

After the excesses of the 1980s it is easy to forget that shoulder pads are functional, intended to improve the shoulder line, make clothes fit better or sit on your shoulders better.

My shoulders are not narrow but they slope, with knobs on the end. The result is that clothes bunch up under the armhole or, because my figure is pretty two-dimensional, the garment slides back pulling across the front neck, or the neck gets stretched because knits start sliding down my arms.

Given current fashion I just size shoulder pads accordingly.

I have very narrow shoulders and am slightly short waisted, but IMO shoulder pads look terribly phony and out of style. I've pulled them out of every garment I had.

It all depends on how an individual garment looks on you with & without pads. The goal is to look like you have shoulders, not like you're wearing shoulder pads.

For example, raglan sleeves can accentuate narrow, sloping shoulders. So can big collars and cowlnecks. Such garments might look better with pads than without