Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1918 — BUTTONS FROM NECK TO HEEL [ARTICLE]

BUTTONS FROM NECK TO HEEL

Closing Gown Down Back an Idea Created by Designer Aided by Smart Woman. Primitive draping is in high fashion. And right against it, sitting in the same room with it and exploiting itself quite as proudly and successfully, says a fashion correspondent, will be a gown that is fastened with bone buttons from the nape of the neck to the turn of the heel. It is pure perverseness to employ a line of buttons down the back of a frock. The entire world of fashion was stimulating itself to the-utmost to provide new ways with ancient ideas. It was on the cards that we would drape ourselves in different ways. Then some designer, aided by a smart woman, made a tight bodice to a frock, buttoned all the way down the back, and added a Japanese bow at the waistline. What was the result? Huge bows and tight bodices, smoothly pulled across the bust and sinking in over the diaphragm, became an exalted fashion. Perhaps it was panic, and not perverseness, that created this gown. It takes a skillful hand to wrap material around the body in a graceful manner, and we have not the art of the primitives. A modest woman has a right to demand that this drapery be well put together before she appears in it in public, to dance, to dine or to walk. The Japanese woman can wind her sarong about her hips, and other an- - cient races tie invisible knots in material to keep It modestly in place, but we are used to hooks and eyes, buckles and buttons, and we are a bit afraid to go abroad in something that depends upon our skill in tying knots to keep us from being naked and ashamed.