The Modern Figure

1917

Milady's Boudoir

The modern corset for the beauty figures is a bit higher busted, and curves in a wee bit more at the waist than they have for a decade past, but the finished effect is one of suppleness and natural curves. Anything like rigidity or the stiffness caused by tight lacing is avoided and the new corset is quite as comfortable as the almost boneless model, reaching just above the waistline, which the "natural figure" demanded. Figures are better taken care of by the corset, which offers a little support to the bust and rises just high enough above the waistline not to cut into the flesh when its wearer bends or sits, as the very low girdle corset was apt to do.

This support of the bust is essential in the new basque frock or the snug-fitting girdle dividing bodice and skirt. If they are fitted over a low-bust corset, the unsupported bust bulges over the upper edge and gives a bad line.

The brassiere is an important adjunct to the modern figure, for the new corset-covers of net and chiffon are soft and transparent and something must be worn to hide the corset and break the top line. If the outer blouse is not of transparent stuff, brassieres and corset-cover may be combined in one garment. The material must be firm enough to hold the figure, but under the blouse or chiffon bodice, which demands an equally flimsy corset cover, must be worn a little brassiere of one sort or another.


Every Day Etiquette

"When a new employee comes into the office and is introduced to me, should I rise and shake hands or simply acknowledge the introduction while sitting?" inquired Mabel, the stenographer.

"It is a business affair. You should certainly rise but need not shake hands unless he extends his hand to you. A courteous bow is only necessary in such cases," said her older business friend.

Crepe Lingerie

1914

A girl who is courageously preparing to face comparative poverty with the "dearest fellow in the world" is making all of her lingerie in white cotton crinkle crepe — because she knows that for several years, at least, she will have to do her own washing.

Please don't imagine that this bride's undergarments are anything like the atrocities marked "a bargain — 59 cents each." They are lovely, dainty white combinations, petticoats, night dresses and negligees handmade and cut from the latest French patterns. Some of the sets are finished about the neck, front and sleeves with white lingerie beading, through which narrow ribbons may be run, others are edged with hand-embroidered scallops and several are trimmed with narrow cluny, the one sort of imitation lace which washes well and doesn't look cheap on underwear.

This girl has made her boudoir set, so called — although the nearest she'll come to owning a boudoir for years to come will be a bedroom in a small flat — of white crinkle crepe. It consists of a spread for the dressing table, a cover for the sewing machine, a square pillow for the lounge, a pair of sash curtains and a bed spread to match the lingerie outfit and it will always look fresh because she can wash it with her own hands.

Full Beards and Red Petticoats

1886

People who can remember back of the civil war must know that shaving was almost universal in those days, and that when the contrary practice began it so agitated the country that the newspapers were filled with leading articles on "The Beard Movement" and "The Mustache Movement."

Probably most of our older readers can remember when they first saw a preacher in the pulpit wearing a mustache and the shock it gave them. It was, if possible worse than the other sacrilegious act of bringing fiddles into the choir.

The event which started the beard movement was the visit of the wonderful Hungarian orator, Louis Kossuth, who was extremely handsome and picturesque in the full beard and mustache and soft felt hat with curling feather. He introduced the soft hat as well as the mustache, and as he traveled all over the country in 1854 and 1855 and spoke every where to great crowds whom he powerfully impressed with the masterly English which he had learned from the Bible, Shakespeare, and Webster's dictionary while he lay in an Austrian prison he advertised both his hat and his hair very widely. It would seem rather trivial nowadays for the newspapers to gravely discuss the "beard movement," but that was not the most trivial matter with which the newspapers of thirty years ago busied themselves.

Prominent among their themes shortly before the war was "the Red Petticoat Movement." It became the sensible fashion for women to wear red flannel petticoats instead of the white cotton one which had been the universal wear before. This was an innovation that worried the newspapers seriously. Many of them held the red garment to be, if not actually immodest, at least bold and daunting, and a symbol of the degeneracy of the age. Charles Mackay, then visiting in the country, published an earnest poetical appeal for "the white, the modest petticoat," which went the round of the press. — Buffalo Express.


1858

The Red Petticoat and the White

Charles Mackay sends the following lines, on an absorbing subject, to the public press:

Oh, the red, the flaunting petticoat,
That courts the eye of day,
That loves to flare and be admired,
And blinks from far away;
It may delight the roving sight,
And charm the fancy free,
But if its bearer's half as bold,
I'll pass and let her be;—
With her red, her flaunting petticoat,
She's not the girl for me!

But the white, the modest petticoat,
As pure as drifted snow,
That shuns the gaze in crowded ways,
Where follies come and go.
It stirs the primrose on its path,
Or daisy on the lea;
And if the bearer's like the garb,
How beautiful is she!
With her white, her modest petticoat,
Oh, she's the girl for me!

New Ideas In Lingerie and Fashion

1914

The chemise is coming into its own again. The latest expression of this garment is slashed very deep at each side and it has rounded instead of square corners, so as not to interfere with the garters. It is developed in nainsook and edged with lace, with shoulder straps variously of lace and of ribbon.

The cotton crepe petticoat has lately discovered a rival in the underskirt of pique. This is designed to be worn under tailored skirts. It may show either a simple scalloped edge or an elaborate design of hand embroidery.

Still another variety of petticoat is made of a new material resembling basket cloth. This is ornamented with a design of embroidered dots and finished with a buttonholed edge. — Philadelphia Inquirer.


Dictates of Fashion

The gown that is shirt waisted in the back has gone out of fashion.

Young girls are wearing white velvet hats, the edges bordered with a fluted ruffle of moire ribbon.

The use of chiffon taffeta is becoming more general; it forms the basis of stunning afternoon and evening frocks.

Clear, fresh, flowery colors are said to be about to follow the brilliant futurist effects. They are sweet pea shades.

The new soft taffetas are being shown in all colors. They have the appearance of soft satin in the way they drape.

Embroidery with colored dots is one of the features of novelty underclothes. The colors are not delicate, but strong.

Sashes and belts are a feature of children's dresses. Sashes are quite wide. Belts are of suede and colored and patent leather.

The tango nightgown is the newest, and resembles a chemise and Turkish trousers combined. It is said to be comfortable.

At the theater women are adorning their heads with wonderful Egyptian bandeaux, set with amber or jade and very flexible.

Lingerie is Dainty

1910

Undergarments Look Like the Work of Fairies

Attractive and Almost Endless Selection of Materials Now to Be Had Give a Most Gratifying Variety

Once upon a time a girl thought herself very well provided for when her mother gave her a bolt of longcloth and some spools of cotton and admonished her to be industrious, but times have changed, and girls have changed with them. Today longcloth undergarments are practically unknown and instead of the tatting and crocheted trimmings once fabricated so laboriously the modern woman goes to the shop for the daintiest laces. Her intimate little garments — nighties, chemises, drawers, skirts and underbodies — are all made of cottons or linens that look as if they have been spun by the fairies.

The one thing the dainty modern girl does in imitation of her grandmamma is to make her under-raiment by hand. If she is not skilled in the use of the needle, she buys lingerie by hand.

But, alas, even in the finest materials ready-made lingerie is of two sorts, the good and the bad. It may come from gay Paree or be made in the slums of the great American cities, but it is open to the same objection. The lovely restraint which is shown in the good things is balanced by a superfluity of ornament, a gushing abandon as you might say, that brings a blush to the modest cheek. Is it possible, you think, any woman would wear such horrid things! When garments in coarse lawn and cambric are trimmed in this way they seem so inappropriate, that only to look on them dulls the appetite for elaborate lingerie. "Let me be plain forever more," you growl, "and go forth with a nunlike petticoat, treated only to hems and tucks."

The best results in lingerie are correspondingly attractive, and the endless variety of materials now used for the purpose gives a gratifying variety. Fancy lawn skirts, flounced with dotted muslin or cross-barred muslin, and nightgowns, chemises and underbodies are all made of these dainty weaves. The expensive batistes and dimities, the crinkled crepes and handkerchief lawns once regarded as exclusively for outside wear, are now used for all kinds of undergarments.

With lawns, linen and cotton some new insertions that look like canvas are much used and several kinds of lace appear on a single petticoat. Tasteful monograms in hand embroidery are now de rigeur, and ribbons are run through a lawn insertion with slits of the exact width.

With the exception of the joining of the seams, which is done by machine, every garment constructed in perfect taste should be made by hand. A delicate touch of color sometimes appears in the figured dimities, but the general preference is for all white, with only the ribbons tinted.

The illustration comprises a very smart petticoat and corset cover of nainsook. The skirt is gored, and the two cuts show it may be made either with a deep or a narrow flounce. For a dressy costume the flounce could be of lawn, with lace instead of the cambric trimmings, shown herewith. The underbodice is hand embroidered, and can be made in a single piece, except the tail, for the tucks at the sides fit it into the figure.

Good undervests for summer are of lisle or Italian silk — the vests which are not ribbed. Three of a very excellent gauze-lisle can be had for a dollar, and one dollar and twenty five cents will buy a dainty silk vest with a lace edge and ribbon drawstrings. — Mary Dean.

Smuggling in Bustles

1888

It will soon be unsafe for a lady to go on board a steamboat adorned with the dorsal embellishment of the bustle.

From its first appearance the smuggler seems to have marked the dress-improver for his own, and in particular he has been struck by its advantages as a receptacle for contraband tobacco. Hitherto, however, this abuse of beauty's weapons has been confined to ports which the nobility and gentry do not frequent in large numbers.

But on Monday two aristocratic looking damsels, landing at Queenstown, were discovered (by the courteous instrumentality of a female searcher) to owe their "improvement" solely to Cavendish tobacco. It is a sad state of things when an American belle, in full panoply, can not land on our shores without an inhospitable summons to show "what she has got there."

For your general profit and instruction, ladies, mark what happened to the above adventurous maidens. Amidst the great bustle of the custom-house they left the garments of that name behind, as well as the tobacco and its treble value in current coin. — London Life.

Women Becoming Manly, Men Effeminate, Foppish

1910

Woman Developing Strong Arm

While Men Are Changing to Effeminate, Foppish Persons

Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 28 — Dr. Dudley A. Sargent, a celebrated authority on physical development, declares that woman is fast assuming the physical proportions and mental characteristics of man. Dr. Sargent is director of the Harvard and Sargent gymnasiums in this city. He cites from a model of a composite woman, molded from measurements made from 10,000 women, all taken prior to the year 1890. On the other hand, he avers that man is inclining toward effeminacy.

"Although I've no actual figures to verify the statement," Dr. Sargent says, "I know for a fact that the women of today are more mannish than the women of that time. Women, in the savage state, are so like men in form that it is well nigh impossible to tell them apart. Then, as civilization progressed, their especially feminine characteristics became accentuated, until the exaggeration was almost painful to look at.

"Then the pendulum began to swing the other way. Women are again beginning to look and be more like men. Great changes in this direction have been made since the molding of that statue. The women from whom the measurements for it were taken were different in conformation compared with those of today. The composite was the extreme type of femininity. She was woman overwomanized. Her hips and all the pelvic portion were overlarge. Her waist was oversmall. Her feet were undeveloped. So were her back and neck.

"Since that time her physique has been thoroughly made over. It is approaching that of man. The sloping shoulders of her grandmother's time have disappeared. They are no longer in fashion. In their place we find well-knit, athletic shoulders, broad ones. Her back, likewise, is better developed. Her hips are not so large as they once were. The entire pelvic region has decreased in size and the result has been an enlargement of the waist. The small waist is a thing of the past. Her neck is thicker and more muscular; her limbs more smoothly developed; her hands and feet are larger in every respect. Her chest has been said to be flatter. I should hardly wish to endorse that last opinion. It is true, however, that her chest may appear flatter, because I am glad to say the corset, which formerly forced it upward, has of late, been somewhat modified.

"Another reason for the change in woman's physique is that within the past 10 years women have done a great deal more in the way of athletics than they did formerly. Golf, tennis, running and swimming have done much to improve woman's physical development.

"It is a rule that one may take few exceptions to, that if a woman devotes herself to the activities of a man, there is bound to be a loss of sex. This approximation of man's physique is, from an anthropological point of view, a bad thing. It is to be hoped that men and women do not grow to be more alike than they are today. The same may be said of men. From the overdeveloped Sandow, man has changed to the effeminate and the foppish being. The assimilating of the sexes by each other is a possibility to be decried."

—Olean Evening Times, Olean, NY, Nov. 29, 1910, p. 2.

Exclusive Lingerie Stolen From Line

Oakland, California, 1921

A burglar who will steal women's lingerie from a clothesline in the back yard is one of the lowest kind of thieves, according to Mrs. M. Rigelhupt, 831 East Sixteenth street. The lingerie, which was all made of silk and voile, was of exclusive patterns. Mrs. Rigelhupt had washed it and it was on the line drying. When she went out to bring in the clothes she found that all her lingerie was missing from the line. The police were notified and she values the garments at $75.

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, May 18, 1921, page 2.