Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1881 — Building up Ladies Forms. [ARTICLE]

Building up Ladies Forms.

Clara Belle went to one of the most fashionable New York dressmakers, and asked her to state frankly whether it was or was not common to “build up, or round out the forms of her customers. ” “Oh, my, yes,” the artist replied, “but not in the way that is generally supposed. There is a current libel against our sex that we pad. our busts. The truth is, I solemnly assure you, that such a thing is not done more than one in twenty, on the average, simply because it is not needed. The desire to swell like a pigeon is not common in the female breast, and I hear more complaint of too much in that matter than of too little. The chief trouble with female forms, as every dressmaker knows, is irregularity. The number of women whose two sides do not correspond is wonderful. Sometimes one shoulder is higher than the other, sometimes the hip is bigger, and sometimes the whole figure is awry. Perhaps men are misshapen, but, if so, their clothing is not such as to reveal small deformities. Women’s dress, however, in this era of clinging garments, reveals every imperfection, unless art comes to Nature’s help. The first tiling I do when about to fit a dress, is to critically examine the shape of the wearer. .If the two sides of her are not unlike, I pad out the hollows. The public little suspects how many women wear a cushion on one shoulder or hip. Having secured a smooth, uniform foundation, I can lay on the finery with good effect. Of course we can’t do much for a fleshy woman. In her case all depends on how much girting in at the waist she can bear, and how much depression by an abdominal corset. But a thin woman can in nearly every instance be greatly improved, tn the first place, her body usually lacks taper. Though it is charmingly small at the belt line, it has a disenchanting absence of swell above and below. We therefore pad her dress waist at the sides, beginning thick at her armpits and thinning gradually downward, and also build out on her hips. She becomes delusive, but far more shapely. If she will not be persuaded out of wearing tight sleeves, we have to hide her scrawniness of arms by padding shoulder to elbow. The one thing we can’t hide is stooping, and that is a sadly common defect in American women. Round backs are distressingly numerous, and what can we do for them? Nothing at all. I feel sometimes like putting them asoak, and then strapping them flat on a board, papoose fashion, in the hope of straightening them. Parents ought to look sharp after their little girls in this particular, and put braces on them if necessary.