Forming and wrinkling of composite textile reinforcements depends strongly of bending properties. The physics of bending of fibrous reinforcement is particular. Bending is related to the slip between the fibres. In addition the fibres are almost inextensible. Consequently the plate and shell standard approaches cannot be used. Numerical simulations of the forming can be done by introducing bending energy dependent on the bending moment and the curvature. In this way, it is possible to simulate wrinkles during shaping. To go further and simulate the overall deformation of the textile reinforcements in the thickness, a shell approach, different from the standard theories, is presented to correctly calculate the rotations of the normals of the textile reinforcement