Buy Design

What do we measure in a Varron? A rendition of the Oblation in Varrons logo.

Most of us are familiar with the Vitruvian Man (at least the drawing, if not the name) – a famous drawing with accompanying notes by Leonardo da Vinci made around the year 1492 in one of his journals. It depicts a naked male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man. According to da Vinci’s notes, written in mirror-image writing, it was made as a study of the proportions of the (male) human body as described in a treatise by the Ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, who wrote that in the human body one part relates to another in fairly constant proportions. For example, the length of a man’s outspread arms is equal to his height, the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of a man’s height, the distance from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of a man’s height (does this mean that as the hairline recedes, a man gets taller?).

My interest in body proportions is mainly due to their practical value. For instance, in general, the distance from one’s elbow to the wrist (that is, the length of the forearm) is the length of one’s foot. Shopping for shoes, I do not have to bend one leg to bring one foot up and look down to see if the potential shoe of choice would fit. I only have to set the shoe against my forearm and when it’s the same length, the pair will, and do, fit me. The price tag is , of course, a different story. The hand too, when clinched, is related to the foot: the circumference of the former is the same as the length of the latter. When buying socks, wrap the “foot” of the item around your fist and when the edge of the heel just touches the tip of the toe, the pair of socks will fit. The distance around one’s neck (circumference) is generally equal to one-half the circumference of the waist. When checking out a pair of pants, I simply wrap the waist around my neck and when one end touches the other – add to cart. A gap means the article is small and an overlap means a belt has to go with it.

Sadly, this convenience of proportions won’t work for everybody. For example, the neck-to-waist harmony is absent in people with rotund middles. This would not work either for those who, head sunk to trunk, have practically no necks around which to wrap the merchandise.

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TAILPIECE. To recapitulate what was earlier asked in the e-group, to avoid falling hair – the solution is: step aside. Thanks to Vrods Nilo, Dennis, and Terry for your “falling hair” haikus. But you know, even though that question is about falling hair, it is really not about falling hair. So the best answer is Vrod Nestor’s, and he said “On a second, I thought my IQ is getting lower. And then I get it – ha, ha corny.”