Part 1 :
"I didn’t' miss it till I stopped dancin' an' started for home," said Miss Linnet Spry, at an early hour today when her mother met her at the edge o' town with another skirt. -Kim Hubbard.
"New fashions in clothes are almost always a warning of a change of the fashion of behavior for women." Thus observed Miss Jane Cowl in an interview a few years ago. Of course, remarks the Professor, which, in a few words, is pretty much what we have been talking about all along. Who, then, determines what women's behavior will be next season?
Or, in other words, who sets the Fashion? A gentleman eminent in London in the trade-"What must be considered, taking it all in all," he says, "the greatest of all trades" gives his view that "different persons set it at different times." The mystery is "how it unifies, seeing that there are many always producing many different things, only one of which universalizes." He continues: "The cause of this universalization is difficult to trace, and cannot be attributed to any given source. It is not by the consorting of those engaged therein, for they are all working apart, and for themselves."
Indeed, those engaged "therein" frequently misread the inclination of women toward their behavior for the coming season. For instance, a year or so ago certain French designers tried to introduce in dresses fullness around the hips, with skirt falling narrower below-departing from the ideal of the moment of the figure natural. It didn't go. Women's wouldn't have it. They had to give up the attempt-these would-be originators of fashions.
A gentleman who has nothing to do with the trade, but approaches the question from the position of a professor of sociology-perhaps, taking it all in all, the greatest of sciences-at the University of Chicago, explained a few years ago that "new styles in clothes are an indication of people's restlessness and desire for new experiences." He added that at that time women were "not ready to be rational in the matter of clothes."
It is interesting to recall that it was regarded as a purely "rational" idea which first gave rise, so to put it, to the modern short skirt. At the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 a Dress Reform Congress was held. Among the fruits of this revival of an earlier Cause were the Rainy-Day Clubs forthwith organized in many cities, and the popularization of the "Rainy-Day Skirt." This novel garment, completely clearing the ground, was regarded as very practical in sloppy weather. The alterations in women's behavior, however, were at that time more subtle than sensational. And, though sloppy weather continued to appear, this shortened skirt might have disappeared altogether in favor of the standard length had it not been for the development in women's behavior largely occasioned by the bicycle.
When Marjorie put away her bicycle, perhaps it was a desire for new experiences which brought in the draped be tasseled tunics of 1907 and thereabout. Or perhaps it was the decision of a certain number of Grandes Maisons in Paris. Perhaps it was the inscrutable workings of the Life Force. Perhaps, in happy harmony, it was all three. At any rate, feminine legs, after a long period of subjection to concealment, had begun to take their place in the sun. The shortened skirt appeared again, for the first time in the twentieth century, in 1909. However, legs were still a treat up to 1919.
It was not until about 1925 that the American woman of every size, shape, age, and condition hitched her skirt up with startling generosity-and every voting precinct in every American town and city became a silk-stocking ward. It was then that endless feminine voyagers returning home vied with one another to give a notable demonstration of what ship-news cameramen invariably demanded. And the late Flo Ziegfeld, credited with having invented the business of glorifying the American girl and with being the first sponsor of the slim, boyish figure, promoted the Ziegfeld contests for the most beautiful legs in America. Legs had then come so much to rule that, it has been reported, Ziegfeld never looked at the faces of chorus girl applicants but always at their legs, explaining: "It's unnecessary to look at faces. The circumference of the calf is always the same as the circumference of the neck."
Together with the increasing projection of her legs Marjorie, of course, had been changing in architectural effect all over; and, indeed, in what have been called her "fundamental life values" more radically perhaps than ever before. "And how?" Well, among other revolutionary matters in the feminine status, there was what Mrs. Bertrand Russell, in commenting on one Ann Vickers whose career developed during this period, terms "the biological rebellion of women." "Corsets," observes Mr. Amos Parrish, "have been the foundation of the mode for centuries." From the Gay Nineties to the fashion furor of She Done Him Wrong the corset has led a dramatic life. As late as 1905 and 1906 Marjorie continued to have pads of satin fastened into place under her arms and on her hips to accentuate her curves. Her corset, heavily boned, was gripped together by hooks and eyes in the steel busk down the front. A lady of high degree then commissioned her maid to do the lacing that followed, beginning at the back of the waist and traveling up and down until the required proportions had been achieved.
But by 1908 Marjorie's front, at least, had altered considerably. Though hips remained luscious curves, a novel invention signalizing a new ideal of feminine anatomical construction, the "Straight Front" corset, supplanted the stays of historic hourglass design. The bust cut lower than heretofore beneath a bosom still hefty, this steel-boned encasement extended nearly to the knees. With the opulence of curves gradually waning, the long straight line of Marjorie's front, slightly altering from time to time, lingered until the war.
Department of Commerce figures show that for several years prior to 1917 the old boned corset industry maintained a fairly even level around $70,000,000 for its annual value of manufactured products. Temblors do not seem to have hccn noticed in the corset industry until that year. Then the behavior of women changed quite rapidly. The Corset less Age rode in. Two things had affected Marjorie-the tempo of jazz and our entrance into the World War.
The corset department, in the words of the trade, became the "hound dog" in every department store. American women's sacrifice of their stays during the war released 28; 00o tons of steel-"enough to build two battleships." So a member of the War Industries Board has said it. Mrs. Nicholas Longworth has been credited with unofficially deciding for her countrywomen that corsets were nonessentials.
Distinguished fashion editors have traced the chic of Modern Marjorie to a movement born of necessity rather than of inspiration-that is, the simplicity and "beauty of movement" imposed by the war. Wars have habitually affected fashions. Cataclysms have had a way of affecting Marjorie's behavior, and as a consequence, in certain historic instances, her underwear.
We read of young ladies of the past with skirts looped up on the left side above the knee with a cameo brooch. One, it is recorded, made a bet that her dress, including trinkets, did not weigh two pounds. She afterwards retired and took off her clothes, which were weighed, and the whole costume turned the scales at a little over a pound. One of these dresses went by the name of the "female savage," and consisted of a gauze chemise over pink flashings, with golden garters. The "pink flashings" were no doubt Califon. These young ladies were the Merveilleuses after the French Revolution.
Marjorie's personal participation in the World War was, of course, unprecedented-at any rate, since the time of the Amazons. And beyond question this new experience, on so vast a scale, was most decisive in putting a mark on everything connected with Marjorie's "physical freedom." When not at the theatre of war, women of every degree all over the world played, as never before, an active part in the arena of industry and commerce.
In discarding hampering clothes, inevitably the first article to be abandoned was the old boned corset. And within less than a score of years this feminine heritage of the ages came to seem as gruesome almost as a suit of mediaeval armor.
Showing posts with label History of "UNDERWARE". Show all posts
Showing posts with label History of "UNDERWARE". Show all posts
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
HISTORY OF "UNDERWARE part # 2
Part 2 :
Again, as has been said, Marjorie's role changed. The moral paragon of nineteenth century tradition had gone clown the chutes of time. The belle, that social axis from the period of the Civil War, had become the pal. This metatnarphosis, however, had begun on the dance floor sometime hcfore Marjorie's participation in the World War.
By 1914. criticism of the change in her behavior was a feature of the press. In a very tight skirt, she was exercised her "desire for new experiences" in the tango, the foxtrot, and, most alarming of all to those apprehensive concerning her welfare, the "sinuous debutante slouch." And the day was at hand when the old boned corset, though still purchased, was "parked" for the duration of the dance-a signal to the inflexible of mind that morals were melting fast.
Mr. Ned Wayburn has given us an account of the advent of the shimmy dance. A one-time pupil of his, now a dazzling luminary of the stage and screen who at the moment is nnuh agitating Fashion circles, goes back of Mr. Wayburn's account in her relation of the origin of this dance so potent in its effect on fashions of a past era. In the Fox vaudeville houses, Miss Mae West relates, while prancing through no less than twelve shows a day, she writhed and trembled in her invention of the shimmy, later taken up by the famous shimmy-shaker, Miss Gilda Gay, and by Miss Bee Palmer, credited with mothering the first of the hotcha dances to be seen on Broadway.
In convention assembled, the dancing masters boosted and predicted a return to old dances, and a farewell to tight skirts. This merely became a habit with them. It was the corset that was being given the farewell. In igao the President of the American National Association of Masters of Dancing, declaring that "exhibition dancing" belonged to the stage and not the ballroom, commanded, "Don't dance from the waist up; dance from the waist down," and added, "All exaggerated movements, especially of the upper part of the body, are in very bad taste:" And jazz, it was being widely agreed, was on the way out, "having done more to eliminate itself than all the campaigns against it."
A couple of years later the Association in convention at Atlantic City again decided that the shimmy was a "muscle dance" and was "tainted," and decreed that this dance together with several other creations should fall under the ban of the "professors." You'd think sometimes from their pronouncements that the dancing masters, more than Schiaparelli, Augustabernard, Mainbocher, Molyneux, Lanvin, Vionnet, et al., made the styles. It might, indeed, reasonably be deduced that the dance impelled twentieth century Marjorie to discard her clothes, and that some time later, as we are to see, it did much in causing her to resume her corset, at least in a new form.
The trade, apparently, little more than the dancing masters perceived that the now historic Flapper Era was on for an extended run. In 1922 a trade publication editor, addressing the annual convention of National Hosiery and Underwear Manufacturers Association, asserted that the hem of Marjorie's skirt had reached its highest altitude and predicted that within a year there would be a return to "somewhere within the immediate vicinity of the calf."
With the reduction of her hips, Marjorie had also reduced her legs. When men now middle-aged were lads, the thrill had been to get a glimpse of "big legs." Legs had become slim-at least, that was the ideal. But many shops, it was known to the trade, "in order to cater to the vanity of women" marked their hosiery a half size smaller than it really was. And the rainbow was applied to hosiery. In the Flapper Era, according to a statement of the trade, stockings were procurable in 18,000 kinds and shades.
As under things, too, growing slimmer along with legs, had begun to be much more accessible to general observation than ever before, rainbow shades had been introduced into lingerie. A shell pink had been the first to "take"; then a deeper pink was used. Maize and a deep yellow followed this. Orchid and Nile came next. For some unknown reason a delicate blue which was offered failed of popularity. When, however, early in the nineteen twenties, Marjorie stood in front of Fifth Avenue shops and stared greedily into the windows at the charming models in black underwear, she felt, momentarily, a thrill of rather horrified fascination.
In the twelfth century, the Professor tells us, the devil was represented by an old illustrator in the costume of a fine lady with the long hanging sleeves and tightly laced bodice of the time. A century later English preachers denounced the laced openings through which Marjorie showed her costly under-linen and designated then as "gates of hell." "W. C. T. U. Condemns Filmy Attire of Girls." "Girls Never More Sinful, Says Priest." "Bare Knees Shock School Principal." So ran newspaper headlines in 1922-25
The W. C. T. U. was of the opinion that feminine clothing "instead of being safeguards seduce the mind." The Reverend Father found the female form being made to "appear as attractive or seductive as possible." Certain schools ruled that skirts must come four inches or more below the knee, petticoats must be worn with all light skirts, and the girls must abandon the wearing of fancy garters below the knees, or rolled down stockings.
Bare knees were followed by the idea of bare legs altogether. But, as reported in the trade, most women declined to follow the Bare Leg fad "for obvious reasons." But forthwith they were "demanding" a Bare Leg Stocking, which was forthwith supplied.
1926. The world ablaze with Flaming Youth. Mr. Scott Fitzgerald still the contemporary historian. "Youth Revolt as Science Sees It"-Current History Magazine. "What About Our Young People?"-New York Herald-Tribune. Necking. A passion for petting parties. "Jazz-mad" boys and girls. The Charleston. Pocket flasks. Etc., etc., etc. Parents, educators, publicists, and the clergy, alternately assailing and defending the Younger Generation, the Youth Movement-its manners, morals, speech, actions, and thoughts, and, perhaps above all, feminine dress.
Aesthetics and even morality here and there found a voice rose in defense of the new order. As an instance, a designer of gowns lecturing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1922 predicted that future generations would be likely to remember the period for its turn to "natural clothes for women." "We have," he declared, "brought freedom of nature to our styles."
And the high-minded opinion expressed in 1926 by the "national director of social morality" of the W. C. T. U. and president of the National Council of Women's Clubs was that women were "not seeking to stimulate the interest of men through new dress creations." "It is harder," she said, "to arouse a man's interest now in an exposed knee than it was twenty years ago in the flash of an ankle beneath the billowy folds of a crinoline dress. The whole situation is more healthful, more frank. The principle of most girls' dress is simplicity, not sex appeal."
At any rate, Marjorie had welcomed the new order with such enthusiasm that to many it seemed for a while as if she were determined to divest herself of clothes entirely and clcnionstrate the longest and most complete fashion cycle of history-from nudity to nudity. Dr. Havelock Ellis observed that it would require but little arithmetical skill to calculate, by a careful comparison of the average weight and length of women's garments with those a decade before, the precise date at which, other things being equal, there would be nothing "Needless to add," he added, "other things will not be equal."
This eminent sociologist, of course, was all for such an issue--Marjorie's arrival automatically at a state of pure Nacktkultur. On another occasion he declared: "Some day, perhaps, a new moral reformer, a great apostle of purity, will appear among us, having his scourge in his hand, and enter our theatres and music halls to purge them. It is not nakedness lie will close out, it will more likely be clothes."
Again, as has been said, Marjorie's role changed. The moral paragon of nineteenth century tradition had gone clown the chutes of time. The belle, that social axis from the period of the Civil War, had become the pal. This metatnarphosis, however, had begun on the dance floor sometime hcfore Marjorie's participation in the World War.
By 1914. criticism of the change in her behavior was a feature of the press. In a very tight skirt, she was exercised her "desire for new experiences" in the tango, the foxtrot, and, most alarming of all to those apprehensive concerning her welfare, the "sinuous debutante slouch." And the day was at hand when the old boned corset, though still purchased, was "parked" for the duration of the dance-a signal to the inflexible of mind that morals were melting fast.
Mr. Ned Wayburn has given us an account of the advent of the shimmy dance. A one-time pupil of his, now a dazzling luminary of the stage and screen who at the moment is nnuh agitating Fashion circles, goes back of Mr. Wayburn's account in her relation of the origin of this dance so potent in its effect on fashions of a past era. In the Fox vaudeville houses, Miss Mae West relates, while prancing through no less than twelve shows a day, she writhed and trembled in her invention of the shimmy, later taken up by the famous shimmy-shaker, Miss Gilda Gay, and by Miss Bee Palmer, credited with mothering the first of the hotcha dances to be seen on Broadway.
In convention assembled, the dancing masters boosted and predicted a return to old dances, and a farewell to tight skirts. This merely became a habit with them. It was the corset that was being given the farewell. In igao the President of the American National Association of Masters of Dancing, declaring that "exhibition dancing" belonged to the stage and not the ballroom, commanded, "Don't dance from the waist up; dance from the waist down," and added, "All exaggerated movements, especially of the upper part of the body, are in very bad taste:" And jazz, it was being widely agreed, was on the way out, "having done more to eliminate itself than all the campaigns against it."
A couple of years later the Association in convention at Atlantic City again decided that the shimmy was a "muscle dance" and was "tainted," and decreed that this dance together with several other creations should fall under the ban of the "professors." You'd think sometimes from their pronouncements that the dancing masters, more than Schiaparelli, Augustabernard, Mainbocher, Molyneux, Lanvin, Vionnet, et al., made the styles. It might, indeed, reasonably be deduced that the dance impelled twentieth century Marjorie to discard her clothes, and that some time later, as we are to see, it did much in causing her to resume her corset, at least in a new form.
The trade, apparently, little more than the dancing masters perceived that the now historic Flapper Era was on for an extended run. In 1922 a trade publication editor, addressing the annual convention of National Hosiery and Underwear Manufacturers Association, asserted that the hem of Marjorie's skirt had reached its highest altitude and predicted that within a year there would be a return to "somewhere within the immediate vicinity of the calf."
With the reduction of her hips, Marjorie had also reduced her legs. When men now middle-aged were lads, the thrill had been to get a glimpse of "big legs." Legs had become slim-at least, that was the ideal. But many shops, it was known to the trade, "in order to cater to the vanity of women" marked their hosiery a half size smaller than it really was. And the rainbow was applied to hosiery. In the Flapper Era, according to a statement of the trade, stockings were procurable in 18,000 kinds and shades.
As under things, too, growing slimmer along with legs, had begun to be much more accessible to general observation than ever before, rainbow shades had been introduced into lingerie. A shell pink had been the first to "take"; then a deeper pink was used. Maize and a deep yellow followed this. Orchid and Nile came next. For some unknown reason a delicate blue which was offered failed of popularity. When, however, early in the nineteen twenties, Marjorie stood in front of Fifth Avenue shops and stared greedily into the windows at the charming models in black underwear, she felt, momentarily, a thrill of rather horrified fascination.
In the twelfth century, the Professor tells us, the devil was represented by an old illustrator in the costume of a fine lady with the long hanging sleeves and tightly laced bodice of the time. A century later English preachers denounced the laced openings through which Marjorie showed her costly under-linen and designated then as "gates of hell." "W. C. T. U. Condemns Filmy Attire of Girls." "Girls Never More Sinful, Says Priest." "Bare Knees Shock School Principal." So ran newspaper headlines in 1922-25
The W. C. T. U. was of the opinion that feminine clothing "instead of being safeguards seduce the mind." The Reverend Father found the female form being made to "appear as attractive or seductive as possible." Certain schools ruled that skirts must come four inches or more below the knee, petticoats must be worn with all light skirts, and the girls must abandon the wearing of fancy garters below the knees, or rolled down stockings.
Bare knees were followed by the idea of bare legs altogether. But, as reported in the trade, most women declined to follow the Bare Leg fad "for obvious reasons." But forthwith they were "demanding" a Bare Leg Stocking, which was forthwith supplied.
1926. The world ablaze with Flaming Youth. Mr. Scott Fitzgerald still the contemporary historian. "Youth Revolt as Science Sees It"-Current History Magazine. "What About Our Young People?"-New York Herald-Tribune. Necking. A passion for petting parties. "Jazz-mad" boys and girls. The Charleston. Pocket flasks. Etc., etc., etc. Parents, educators, publicists, and the clergy, alternately assailing and defending the Younger Generation, the Youth Movement-its manners, morals, speech, actions, and thoughts, and, perhaps above all, feminine dress.
Aesthetics and even morality here and there found a voice rose in defense of the new order. As an instance, a designer of gowns lecturing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1922 predicted that future generations would be likely to remember the period for its turn to "natural clothes for women." "We have," he declared, "brought freedom of nature to our styles."
And the high-minded opinion expressed in 1926 by the "national director of social morality" of the W. C. T. U. and president of the National Council of Women's Clubs was that women were "not seeking to stimulate the interest of men through new dress creations." "It is harder," she said, "to arouse a man's interest now in an exposed knee than it was twenty years ago in the flash of an ankle beneath the billowy folds of a crinoline dress. The whole situation is more healthful, more frank. The principle of most girls' dress is simplicity, not sex appeal."
At any rate, Marjorie had welcomed the new order with such enthusiasm that to many it seemed for a while as if she were determined to divest herself of clothes entirely and clcnionstrate the longest and most complete fashion cycle of history-from nudity to nudity. Dr. Havelock Ellis observed that it would require but little arithmetical skill to calculate, by a careful comparison of the average weight and length of women's garments with those a decade before, the precise date at which, other things being equal, there would be nothing "Needless to add," he added, "other things will not be equal."
This eminent sociologist, of course, was all for such an issue--Marjorie's arrival automatically at a state of pure Nacktkultur. On another occasion he declared: "Some day, perhaps, a new moral reformer, a great apostle of purity, will appear among us, having his scourge in his hand, and enter our theatres and music halls to purge them. It is not nakedness lie will close out, it will more likely be clothes."
HISTORY OF "UNDERWARE part # 3
Part 3 :
The vested interests, however, the Professor remarks, are very much more to be reckoned with than the school of thought represented by Dr. Ellis's fanciful picture seems to suppose. That is, the vast industries which since Marjorie was an aboriginal nudist have been built up to supply her with clothes will very likely continue to keep her draped in some fashion. Though for a stretch of time the effect on the underwear world of Marjorie's figuring out what she could do without next was, indeed, devastating.
Petticoats followed corsets into the museum of forgotten things. A generation had come into being which wouldn't have recognized a chemise if it had seen one. Many manufacturers in the old feminine under apparel lines went out of business. The survivors, and fresh inventive talent, turned to the study of how to cash in on the tendency of womankind to wear as few clothes as possible under existing law. The aim was to capitalize "the utter definition of the figure."
The beginnings of the modern brassiere and bandeaux are difficult to trace. However, a matron in the full flower of perhaps a bit more than two score years gives the following account of the matter: "About the beginning of this century among certain groups of girls it was the custom to wear a small garment, cut like a corset-cover but fitted very tightly to the body, fulfilling the purpose of what is now known as a brassiere. This began, among the girls I knew, for use under bathing suits, but it proved so satisfactory that they extended its use to everyday wear. The garment had, so far as I know, no official name at that time; but I have heard it lightly referred to as a `straitjacket.' Thin girls, naturally, had no need of such a piece of clothing, but wore instead a short panel of white cotton material covered with row of ruffles about two inches in depth. This biblike creation was pinned under the corset cover or tied around the body just under the arms."
And according to a gentleman long associated with the corset business, the brassiere was not unknown to the trade even in the old boned days, perhaps as far back as thirty years ago. Though around six years ago, as expressed by the youthful today, a "girl" would have been "ashamed" to wear even a girdle. A phenomenon of the present century is that about two thirds of the feminine population are "girls." Alas! one third was, as it is put in the language of try Fashion business, "defective-conscious"-and these had to wear corsets of some kind. Recalling the old gag about the fat man, think of that honorable but distrait body the Corset and Brassiere Manufacturers' Association and how it must have loved the fat girl, for she was keeping a number of them in business during that period.
During the Flapper Era, Marjorie-whose figure through the ages had been everything from a Greek column to a huge hourglass-was in effect a can-opener. In 1925 there were signs that the flapper was becoming the dapper girl. Around 1927 rigidity parted from slenderness, and slenderness wasn't smart at all if, in the words of Miss Carmel Snow, it wasn't "as pliant as a wreath of cigarette smoke."
Such underwear as had been worn during something like the past decade had, of course, been designed, as a trade writer remarks, "to reveal instead of alter the natural lines of the figure." At first, handmade knit goods, not machine made, had been imported-from France and from the Philippines. Julius Kayser and Company and other well-known firms had built the manufactured knit goods industry up here.
The mind of one astute manufacturer, seeking to devise something compatible with the prevailing feminine disposition of mind, had turned back in 1920 to the idea of the track suits he had found so comfortable when at college that he had worn them as underwear-the track suit at that time was the nearest approach to the comfortable athletic type of men's underwear now so familiar. The result was a garment at first marketed under the name of Athleeta. But at that moment, it became evident; Marjorie did not like the suggestion of athletics in connection with her underthings. The name was changed to the Butterfly. Marjorie, however, apparently was not attuned to so old-fashioned a suggestion as a butterfly. Then the name of Futurist was decided upon, and the garment soon attained national distribution. That, psychologically, was it: Marjorie was a Futurist!
With the wreath-of-cigarette-smoke silhouette, silk became more and more popular for underthings. "Glove-silk" was soon to come. The Vanity Fair Silk Mills and other manufacturers valiantly seeking to stay in business put on extensive advertising campaigns, which were among the first to strike the note of cleverness and vivacity in such matters. The "second skin" idea, with "Skin-Fits" and "Sprites" and such, was on the way.
The vested interests, however, the Professor remarks, are very much more to be reckoned with than the school of thought represented by Dr. Ellis's fanciful picture seems to suppose. That is, the vast industries which since Marjorie was an aboriginal nudist have been built up to supply her with clothes will very likely continue to keep her draped in some fashion. Though for a stretch of time the effect on the underwear world of Marjorie's figuring out what she could do without next was, indeed, devastating.
Petticoats followed corsets into the museum of forgotten things. A generation had come into being which wouldn't have recognized a chemise if it had seen one. Many manufacturers in the old feminine under apparel lines went out of business. The survivors, and fresh inventive talent, turned to the study of how to cash in on the tendency of womankind to wear as few clothes as possible under existing law. The aim was to capitalize "the utter definition of the figure."
The beginnings of the modern brassiere and bandeaux are difficult to trace. However, a matron in the full flower of perhaps a bit more than two score years gives the following account of the matter: "About the beginning of this century among certain groups of girls it was the custom to wear a small garment, cut like a corset-cover but fitted very tightly to the body, fulfilling the purpose of what is now known as a brassiere. This began, among the girls I knew, for use under bathing suits, but it proved so satisfactory that they extended its use to everyday wear. The garment had, so far as I know, no official name at that time; but I have heard it lightly referred to as a `straitjacket.' Thin girls, naturally, had no need of such a piece of clothing, but wore instead a short panel of white cotton material covered with row of ruffles about two inches in depth. This biblike creation was pinned under the corset cover or tied around the body just under the arms."
And according to a gentleman long associated with the corset business, the brassiere was not unknown to the trade even in the old boned days, perhaps as far back as thirty years ago. Though around six years ago, as expressed by the youthful today, a "girl" would have been "ashamed" to wear even a girdle. A phenomenon of the present century is that about two thirds of the feminine population are "girls." Alas! one third was, as it is put in the language of try Fashion business, "defective-conscious"-and these had to wear corsets of some kind. Recalling the old gag about the fat man, think of that honorable but distrait body the Corset and Brassiere Manufacturers' Association and how it must have loved the fat girl, for she was keeping a number of them in business during that period.
During the Flapper Era, Marjorie-whose figure through the ages had been everything from a Greek column to a huge hourglass-was in effect a can-opener. In 1925 there were signs that the flapper was becoming the dapper girl. Around 1927 rigidity parted from slenderness, and slenderness wasn't smart at all if, in the words of Miss Carmel Snow, it wasn't "as pliant as a wreath of cigarette smoke."
Such underwear as had been worn during something like the past decade had, of course, been designed, as a trade writer remarks, "to reveal instead of alter the natural lines of the figure." At first, handmade knit goods, not machine made, had been imported-from France and from the Philippines. Julius Kayser and Company and other well-known firms had built the manufactured knit goods industry up here.
The mind of one astute manufacturer, seeking to devise something compatible with the prevailing feminine disposition of mind, had turned back in 1920 to the idea of the track suits he had found so comfortable when at college that he had worn them as underwear-the track suit at that time was the nearest approach to the comfortable athletic type of men's underwear now so familiar. The result was a garment at first marketed under the name of Athleeta. But at that moment, it became evident; Marjorie did not like the suggestion of athletics in connection with her underthings. The name was changed to the Butterfly. Marjorie, however, apparently was not attuned to so old-fashioned a suggestion as a butterfly. Then the name of Futurist was decided upon, and the garment soon attained national distribution. That, psychologically, was it: Marjorie was a Futurist!
With the wreath-of-cigarette-smoke silhouette, silk became more and more popular for underthings. "Glove-silk" was soon to come. The Vanity Fair Silk Mills and other manufacturers valiantly seeking to stay in business put on extensive advertising campaigns, which were among the first to strike the note of cleverness and vivacity in such matters. The "second skin" idea, with "Skin-Fits" and "Sprites" and such, was on the way.
HISTORY OF "UNDERWARE part # 4
Part 4 :
Fashions represent a state of mind. At any rate, that is as good a way of putting it as any. Marjorie had jumped up to a great "freedom." "Damn conventions!" But when the conventions had all been broken, what was the big idea in continuing to flout them? No kick then in "daring." Though in 1927 Marjorie's dressiest gown-of "transparent velvet"-was something that literally could be "pulled through a wedding ring," she was entirely amenable to the decree from Paris of the "fitted waistline." Remaining an Atlanta on the golf course and tennis courts, basketball fields and cross-country hikes, in the evening she got into a "picture frock" and became "utterly feminine." As she became muted to "graceful ballroom dancing," she bought girdles because she "looked better in them," and "didn't dare take them off."
Brassieres and bandeaux lengthened into what is now termed the foundation garment. Or, as stated by a merchandise manager prominent in the trade, "The manufacturers created the foundation garment and not only revolution their industry but brought to it a new and unprecedented prosperity." The corset department became by 1931 "the biggest profit-maker in virtually every important department store in the country."
"We had been told so often," Mr. Lee Simonson has remarked, "that women would never, never again lace themselves up that we had begun to believe it." Indeed, during the Corset less Age the retail trade had largely assumed that this order of things was to be permanent. Mr. Simonson, who seems to indulge a sadly cynical view of Marjorie, continued his observations in The New Republic:
A revolution was never more dispassionately announced. The word corset, reviving all the terrible things physicians once said it did to the female liver, is something to recoil from; it gives an immediate sense of constriction and suffocation. And who does not want to be free? But a foundation garment-that is another matter. Here is another form of self-sacrificing service that American industry has evolved. The corset is now dedicated in a spirit of humility as a form of unobtrusive architecture to support feminine charm.
The researches of fabric-tire laboratories have of course not been in vain. Foundation garments do not have to be laced by a French maid who braces herself for the effort by sticking a knee into the small of her mistress's back. The more architectonic of these new foundations are fairly elaborate affairs, with rather complicated adjustments of flaps, overlappings and lacings, occasionally simplified by zippers. But the indispensable sense of freedom is preserved because any woman can strap herself in unaided.... In any case, corsets, whatever the ideal shape proves to be, will remain firm enough to make the feminine body take the right lines in the right places, resilient enough to attract the Life Force and sufficiently pliant to yield to it at the right moment.
From a different point of view, Mr. Amos Parrish declared, "The 1930 corset is the foundation of the 1930 mode ... the loveliest, the most feminine mode Fashion has ever known." And, with one momentary digression, the "utterly feminine" ideal has prevailed, recently with even an increasing emphasis, ever since.
In 1932, in the phrase of a Fashion journalist of twenty-two sought out by the Professor in his researches, Marjorie was more "woman-conscious" than she had ever been before. As we have noted earlier in our studies, the opening of 1933 saw the mannish flurry, as Mr. Weare Holbrook put it, "Doing all that can be done to make a miss as good as a male"; beginning with a man's hat-of a sort (which according to Mr. Holbrook, "Looked like something which might have been discarded by an Indian guide in the Canadian woods"); and the flurry blowing up with the threat of pants for women.
With all the energy expended in "strapping her in," if a lady in the old boned days (when corsets were classed for selling by measurements around the body-waist or bust) happened to be one of the "shorts" or "talls," her corset didn't fit her perpendicularly. In 1930 manufacturers began to "retype" their lines in accord with Type Figure Charts arrived at by scientific research. Discussing "the scientific advance in corsetry" both as to manufacture and fitting, a valuable journal entitled the Dry Goods Reporter calls attention to the innumerable small corset shops that have sprung up throughout the country "owned or managed by women who have taken courses under trained instructors on how to fit a corset properly, these instructions being based on actual knowledge of the construction of the human figure."
Science answered to science. The new "two-way-stretch" classic corsets, it is reported, met with the approbation of physicians and heads of gymnasiums, who felt that they were Irrncficial to most women as a support rather than injurious in compressing the organs. And, indeed, the illustrations in the new corset advertising began to look as though a highly ingenious gymnasium instructor has posed the models.
If Marjorie of the "nip-in" waistline had again, as Mr. Simonson puts it, "bought herself a figure" it was because, as an advertisement says, she "did not want to pay-and pay for that hip-less look." The term "flattering" came in, and, without precise reference to the dictionary definition of the word, dominated everything. "Flattering lines" of the figure required that under things be "Underthins." And the problem of deliciously feminizing Marjorie and still retaining the "slenderizing idea" was solved by the creation of "All-in ones." In 1932, according to the head of an advertising agency handling famous corset accounts, eighty-five per cent of the foundation garments manufactured embraced, in one way or another, two or three garments in one. Sometimes the lingerie ensemble was a combination slip and panties with a fitted brassiere top.
During 1933 there have been divers voices heard as to just what Marjorie's silhouette ought to be. Enormous shoulder ruffles and balloon sleeves have emerged again from one period of the past. In Paris the Mae West "epidemic" swept the salons. The hobble skirt has been heard of again. Augusta Bernard has launched a revival of the sheath silhouette, which perhaps is pretty much the same when called all sorts of things-the mermaid silhouette, the slip silhouette, and the Greek column silhouette. This latter is not vividly reminiscent of the Greek column Marjorie.
At any rate, he concludes, what seems at the moment to be indicated for wear beneath is something on the order of "a supple, boneless foundation with emphasized uplift of Alencon lace, ingeniously cut to achieve that unbroken line that is the ideal of every chic woman today."
Fashions represent a state of mind. At any rate, that is as good a way of putting it as any. Marjorie had jumped up to a great "freedom." "Damn conventions!" But when the conventions had all been broken, what was the big idea in continuing to flout them? No kick then in "daring." Though in 1927 Marjorie's dressiest gown-of "transparent velvet"-was something that literally could be "pulled through a wedding ring," she was entirely amenable to the decree from Paris of the "fitted waistline." Remaining an Atlanta on the golf course and tennis courts, basketball fields and cross-country hikes, in the evening she got into a "picture frock" and became "utterly feminine." As she became muted to "graceful ballroom dancing," she bought girdles because she "looked better in them," and "didn't dare take them off."
Brassieres and bandeaux lengthened into what is now termed the foundation garment. Or, as stated by a merchandise manager prominent in the trade, "The manufacturers created the foundation garment and not only revolution their industry but brought to it a new and unprecedented prosperity." The corset department became by 1931 "the biggest profit-maker in virtually every important department store in the country."
"We had been told so often," Mr. Lee Simonson has remarked, "that women would never, never again lace themselves up that we had begun to believe it." Indeed, during the Corset less Age the retail trade had largely assumed that this order of things was to be permanent. Mr. Simonson, who seems to indulge a sadly cynical view of Marjorie, continued his observations in The New Republic:
A revolution was never more dispassionately announced. The word corset, reviving all the terrible things physicians once said it did to the female liver, is something to recoil from; it gives an immediate sense of constriction and suffocation. And who does not want to be free? But a foundation garment-that is another matter. Here is another form of self-sacrificing service that American industry has evolved. The corset is now dedicated in a spirit of humility as a form of unobtrusive architecture to support feminine charm.
The researches of fabric-tire laboratories have of course not been in vain. Foundation garments do not have to be laced by a French maid who braces herself for the effort by sticking a knee into the small of her mistress's back. The more architectonic of these new foundations are fairly elaborate affairs, with rather complicated adjustments of flaps, overlappings and lacings, occasionally simplified by zippers. But the indispensable sense of freedom is preserved because any woman can strap herself in unaided.... In any case, corsets, whatever the ideal shape proves to be, will remain firm enough to make the feminine body take the right lines in the right places, resilient enough to attract the Life Force and sufficiently pliant to yield to it at the right moment.
From a different point of view, Mr. Amos Parrish declared, "The 1930 corset is the foundation of the 1930 mode ... the loveliest, the most feminine mode Fashion has ever known." And, with one momentary digression, the "utterly feminine" ideal has prevailed, recently with even an increasing emphasis, ever since.
In 1932, in the phrase of a Fashion journalist of twenty-two sought out by the Professor in his researches, Marjorie was more "woman-conscious" than she had ever been before. As we have noted earlier in our studies, the opening of 1933 saw the mannish flurry, as Mr. Weare Holbrook put it, "Doing all that can be done to make a miss as good as a male"; beginning with a man's hat-of a sort (which according to Mr. Holbrook, "Looked like something which might have been discarded by an Indian guide in the Canadian woods"); and the flurry blowing up with the threat of pants for women.
With all the energy expended in "strapping her in," if a lady in the old boned days (when corsets were classed for selling by measurements around the body-waist or bust) happened to be one of the "shorts" or "talls," her corset didn't fit her perpendicularly. In 1930 manufacturers began to "retype" their lines in accord with Type Figure Charts arrived at by scientific research. Discussing "the scientific advance in corsetry" both as to manufacture and fitting, a valuable journal entitled the Dry Goods Reporter calls attention to the innumerable small corset shops that have sprung up throughout the country "owned or managed by women who have taken courses under trained instructors on how to fit a corset properly, these instructions being based on actual knowledge of the construction of the human figure."
Science answered to science. The new "two-way-stretch" classic corsets, it is reported, met with the approbation of physicians and heads of gymnasiums, who felt that they were Irrncficial to most women as a support rather than injurious in compressing the organs. And, indeed, the illustrations in the new corset advertising began to look as though a highly ingenious gymnasium instructor has posed the models.
If Marjorie of the "nip-in" waistline had again, as Mr. Simonson puts it, "bought herself a figure" it was because, as an advertisement says, she "did not want to pay-and pay for that hip-less look." The term "flattering" came in, and, without precise reference to the dictionary definition of the word, dominated everything. "Flattering lines" of the figure required that under things be "Underthins." And the problem of deliciously feminizing Marjorie and still retaining the "slenderizing idea" was solved by the creation of "All-in ones." In 1932, according to the head of an advertising agency handling famous corset accounts, eighty-five per cent of the foundation garments manufactured embraced, in one way or another, two or three garments in one. Sometimes the lingerie ensemble was a combination slip and panties with a fitted brassiere top.
During 1933 there have been divers voices heard as to just what Marjorie's silhouette ought to be. Enormous shoulder ruffles and balloon sleeves have emerged again from one period of the past. In Paris the Mae West "epidemic" swept the salons. The hobble skirt has been heard of again. Augusta Bernard has launched a revival of the sheath silhouette, which perhaps is pretty much the same when called all sorts of things-the mermaid silhouette, the slip silhouette, and the Greek column silhouette. This latter is not vividly reminiscent of the Greek column Marjorie.
At any rate, he concludes, what seems at the moment to be indicated for wear beneath is something on the order of "a supple, boneless foundation with emphasized uplift of Alencon lace, ingeniously cut to achieve that unbroken line that is the ideal of every chic woman today."
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