Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 193, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1918 — BLOUSES FOR ALL [ARTICLE]

BLOUSES FOR ALL

Separate Outside Garment Has Recognized Advantages. Waistcoat, > Cuirass and Ornamental Blouses Are Among the Styles v. Various Tastes. There are still women who wear separate gkirts and blouses without a pretense that tiie two belong to each others;There are still women who wear coat suits with white or colored blouses tnat end at the waistline imd are joined to the skirt under a leather belt ch* one of the material. It may be that this fashion will never die out, but the impulse toward .medievalism in dress has continually acted against the division of the costume at the waistline by the joining together of two colors. The students of dress and those who are in the higher strata of dressmaking, asserts a correspondent,' have observed this medievalism for the last three years. They have preached it to women whose eyes did not see it, but sometimes the seeds of reform have fallen on stony ground. Women of middle age, who have gradually developed a thickened waistline, are the ones who insist most upon the separate blouse which ends at the waist, and this is as it should not be. They are the ones who beyond cavil should cling to medievalism in their clothes and wear the tunic, the skirt, the blouse that reaches to the hips. The small waist is taboo, and since it is so, women should accept the fact that the straight figure needs a straight line of clothing. They apologize for their inartistic manner of dressing by saying that a white shirtwaist is so comfortable. But why should its com- . fort be greater when it is cut off at the waist than when it is allowed "to hang outside the skirt? Ts a jury had to decide on this question there would be no dissenting voice. The artists of the world have always pleaded that thick-waisted women wear the kind of clothes that lengthen the line from the shoulder instead of shortening it and cutting the figure in two, as though it were a piece of broken sculpture that had been badly put together. From the appearance of clothes this season it looks as though women are actually beginning to see the advantaged of the separate outside blouse. It is sold by the shops, it is made by dressmakers and it is worn by women who have heretofore never allowed their thoughts to wander outside of the conventional blouse tucked in at the waistline and finished with a belt. There are waistcoat blouses to go under suits which give a straight fine from the collar bone down; there are cuirass blouses that stretch from shoulder to hip in an attenuated line, with long, tight sleeves and roll-over collars; there are ornamental separate blouses, for young girls or those who have slim figures, which are cut in the shape of a peasant’s blouse and lightly girdled at the waist