Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 168, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1918 — DAY OF WAISTCOAT [ARTICLE]

DAY OF WAISTCOAT

Paris. Sketches Predict Advance of the Long Garment. Promises to Be Dominant Feature of New Autumn Clothes Which Will Be Introduced in August. Last January, the women in Paris wore waistcoats of fur, velvet, knitted wool and dyed homespun that reached from the collar bone to the knees. The heads of dressmaking houses, who are carefully watched wherever they go, contributed to the fashion for these accessories by placing them In their own suits. America introduced few of them, and she did not find even the short waistcoat of last February, a success, declares a writer on fashion topics. It was worn by a few segments of smart women, fashionable and unfashionable, rich and poor, but the ton? waistcoat was treated as an outcast. It was not even recognized. But France persisted and the dressmakers in New York are putting It Into suits and frocks for summer resorts. The prophecy runs that It will be a dominant feature of new autumn clothes. In a large bunch of Paris photographs that have come over, this long waistcoat Is repeated In many fabrics on women who are snapped as they go about their new and active life. The sketches that come over from the big designers as heralds of what will be advanced In August, show the long waistcoat also. It Is made in a different color from the gown; it Is used for protection or for beauty, and although it Is probably taken from the reign of Louis XIV, It has none of the elegance or Jauntiness of Its predecessor. It merely looks warm and comfortable, or gay and colorful. It is the longest waistcoat that has ever been worn by woman. It was matched in length by those worn at the court of the Grand Monarque. Looking at It in Its most essential feature, It is merely another way to straighten the figure. It, therefore, can be adopted by those to whom‘middle age has brought an undesired rotundity. ,