St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1889-10-27
THE FIGURES OF OUR GIRLS
A Wicked Dressmaker Says They Are
Not Good at All.
FAIR GIRLS WELL FORMED.
Figures of the Ancient Greek Women
: Beautiful in the Extreme-Fash-
= ions Dictates.

81 particularly want you to cut the
dress so that it will make my waist look
IFaS long as possible" said the plump
byoung damsel. as she threw over her
head and dimpled shoulders the skirt of
her walking costume. SIT has always
been my greatest grief that nearly all
the girls l know have longer waists
| than l."
f. by always" interposed her
mother, "my daughter means the two
years since she has been out In society.
(fOf course, long waists have been very
much in fashion of late. and she has
come to have notion that her figure,
which both her father and myself con-
slider exquisite, is defective in that re-
spect."
''Oh, mammal exclaimed the maiden,
and was going on with speech of pro-
test, when the dresSmaker interrupted
her.
why, madam" said the latter, as
she folded up the airy fabric of silk and
Sarily, any relation between the ideal i'm
female development and the fashion
that clothes it. The former can never
alter, while the latter is the very type
Of change. What we call the mode is
perpetually trying to modify the figure
by tiattening it out, swelling it up like
balloon, or throwing in hump here
and there to render it more symmetri-
cal; but 1t is not to be supposed On that
| account that the ideal is subject to al
teratiOn."
sand one Is to find the ideal, 1 sup
pose, in what the artists, who are such
awful bores, as a rule, call the 'an
tique.'"
THE FUNCTION OF FASHION.
"Better there than anywhere else.
madam. The Frenchnan who in
Structed me in my art used to say that
the function of fashion was rather to
improve upon Nature than to follow her
to pursue fancy rather than reality.
A woman with nothing on or draped
| after the manner of classical Venuses
was not anything like SO attractive as
| the same creature in nineteenth CEN
tury frOck. And therefore. he argued,
| fashion is an improvement upon nat
| ure. But even he admitted that the
type to build upon was not found attired
| in modern ball dress, but in the mar
| BILE of the old Greek Sculptors. 'There
| is the beauty that is absolute he would
confess; the rest is but passing Sc
ductlon to the eye, to please which in
ceSsant change is necesSary."'
'But if ones figure is not the fash
! iOn," pouted the young girl, sit is none
| the less distressing"
Il don't know about that" rejoined
the dressmaker. Il will venture the
liberty of saying that l agree with
| your mother and father in thinking that
your figure is admirable. You have the
| length of limb which so many women
| lack, although you are not very tall.
| Perhaps for the reason that you are
! short you are we'll developed, as few
| tall women in this country are. Your
| arms are long and straight, and the line
| from the back of your neck to your heels
is perpendicular, so that you carry
| yourself gracefully. Best of all, you do
| not exhibit the great and almost univer-
| sal defect of the female figure in Amer
| ica-your waist is not too long.".
$50 you actually regard long waist
as a defect!" exclaimed the elder lady
| in surprise.
q TOO LONG-WAISTED.
"From the point of view of art. yes.
| madam. The American woman is nearly
| always TOO long-Waisted, and for that
| reason chiefly, her figure is the worst in
| the world to-day. while her face is the
! prettiest. American girls are the most
beautiful on earth, so far as features
| and complexion go, and yet how few of
| them are well developed. As an EVIL
| dence of their structural deficiency you
! may observe their surprising want of
health. A waist that is oyer-long, like
a neck of the 'swan-like' variety, is
symptom of constitutional weakness"
''And the Greek"
"Greek women. madam, used to make
| fhn 1yoISt q G HIGH &c Ilnccif1e law
passing a girdle around lust beneath
the bust. This gave the utmost appear
ance of length to the limbs, and the
lines of the chiffon were made as flow
ing as practicable. No costume was
ever more becOming-its seductiYeness
used to be referred to in those times by
advocates of moral purity as its chief
drawback-and it has remained for z, 500
years the ideal female Dress"
Il must confess I'm sorry that it
should be no longer the mode"
.'AS a dreSSmaker. madam, l can
hardly regret it. The Greek style of
garm ent was too simple to afford much
possibility for big bills for cutting, fit
making of dress did not cost $40 for
every one dollars worth of material.
And you must remember that the cos
tune of to-day has this great advantage,
that every woman can look we'll in il if
her dressmaker is a good one, whereas
it was not so with the classical attire.
Your daughter here would appear ad-
m'rably Ia Grecque, while very many
of her friends would not look so we'll.
The figures of the ancient Greek women
were somewhat better than those of
American girls in the year 1889"
sand is the Greek costume never
likely to come back?''
UNDER THE DIRECTORY.
Scarcely. The question of climate
would have some influence. The near
est approach to revival of it in modern
times was seen III France under the di-
retory. The most intensely Greek
young woman of the latter centuries
was the ultra fashionable 'Merveil-
leuse,' or female dude of the epoch.
who wore modified Athenian coStums,
very low in the neck and diaphanous as
to skirts. Her male contemporary pro-
tntype, termed the 'Incroyable,' CORE
sponded to the 'GommeuX' of Paris to-
day, you know"
II presume so. And so fashion is hope
less. you think. eSthetically speaking?"
Altogether so. She cannot be driven,
you know, and the fancies she adopts
are the pureSt freaks. 1t is not more
than couple of hundred years. you re-
member, Since ladies of fashion in
France wore metal apparatus to prevent
the development of the bust from girl
hood. The enormous hoopSkirtS of fifty
years ago, which made the wearers look
like perambulating balloons. were not
more absurd than the bustles so re-
gently in style, that seemed to aim at
the ideal of beauty popular in Abys-
sihia. where a female who is so
oyer-developed in that direction as
not to be able to get up without assist
anee after having sat down is regarded
assthe highest type of physical perfec-
tidn. Nor are any of these insanities
mere unreasonable than the notion of
unnaturally elongating the waist. And
there is one thing worth saying--namely,
that the men are. as rule, very far
from admiring these ingenious defOrm-
tiles adopted by the otner sex; woman
may dress to please the male of her
species, perhaps, but the creature in
pantaloonS is far from approaching her
sacrifices tO the mode If this fact were