Is it correct to say "She hid quite a figure behind the wardrobe"? [closed]

I'm writing a story for my English class. Does the following sentence effectively mean that she had a good figure behind her dress?

She hid quite a figure behind the Wardrobe.

Does it apply to both male and female?

Wardrobe means both the set of clothing that a person owns and a particular piece of furniture to put clothing in. When you say "behind the wardrobe", I picture the furniture because it implies you mean a physical place.

She hid quite a figure with her wardrobe.

Would be a clearer way to phrase it, although it's still a little confusing. Adding the possessives makes it feel more like you are talking about her person, and with tells us that her wardrobe is a manner of hiding, so I'm more likely to think you are talking about clothes since it would be difficult to use furniture for that purpose, although really it could mean that she is hiding amongst the fur coats inside her wardrobe. Still, this would only really apply if all of her clothes we designed to hide her physical form. If you are describing her entrance into a scene rather than generally describing what kind of person she is, I would be more specific about what she was wearing.

She hid quite a figure with her loose shift.

Or something.

You could use this for a man, but we don't talk about a man as having a figure. You would probably use the term physique instead.

He hid his brawny physique with frumpy wardrobe choices.

Now that you've clarified that you want to say she had a nice figure no matter what she wore, I'm going to suggest that you change the sentence entirely. Hiding suggests intent, so you want to change that to something more neutral:

She had quite a figure despite her wardrobe.

Would convey precisely what you are looking for.

Actually, the fact is it does make sense. (With a couple minor repairs.)

A sophisticated reader would understand that by "wardrobe" you, uh, effectively mean "her clothing collection" (not the wooden piece of furniture which holds that clothing collection).

Note though that you should definitely change "the" to "her". It is much clearer then.

(I can see some obscure preamble situations where "the" or perhaps "that" (or "the other" or "the second" or "the new" etc) would work .... but as a general thought it should certainly be "her wardrobe" for clarity.)

Further, as Kit has nicely explained, you could go with "with her wardrobe" rather than "behind her wardrobe".

However, I do feel it makes complete sense, to any sophisticated reader, as

She hid quite a figure behind her wardrobe.

Nice sentence.

Note - there's no capital "w".