Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-04-10
From the New York Sun.

Is MAN MORE PROUD OF HIS SHAPE THAN
woMAS?-A MAKERS OBSERVATIONS
From the New York Sun
! There is in one of the corset manufactures
of New York little blonde-haired woman who
| has for many years made a speciality of mems
corsets, and has established an extensive bust.
ness in a western city. She had a man trained
to take the measures and fit the corsets, and
! frequently she or her forewoman never saw the
customers for whom they made corsets regu.
larly. 1t is a very paving business, for men
rarely question the price of an article they wish
to purchase, and mems corsets are always
made to order and never kept in stock. A
woman the shape OF tub and woman the
shape Of a broomstick will buy the same make
of corsets in different sizes, and somehow ft
herself into them; but if a man wants a corset
at all he wants it to fit, and the cheapest ones
made to order cost SO They do not differ
materially from a womans corset In construc-
ton. being made of the same material, only
with heavier bones and stronger steels. They
differ very materially in shape, however, being
shorter and nearly straight up and down,
though the constant wearing of corsets con-
duces to added fullness Of chest which COM
pensates for the pretty bust curve and slope to
woman's waist They are usually made Of
gray sateen or coutil, but occasionally a very
fastidious customer is found who orders the
daintiest of materials and decorations.
One OF the lady's customers always wore satin
corsets of a delicate color, Tossed and laced
with silk. He was very stout, and broke a
great many of the silk laces, which a woman
will wear almost year without breaking. One
of his latest orders is Nile green satin corset
Tossed and laced with cardinal silk. and
trimmed at the top and bottom with fine white
lace, for which he paid S25 with no demur.
Another customer was so extremely modest
mt ha I'm fa
took his measure and ordered the corsets. fit
ting them on herself when they were finished.
1t requires three visits to insure perfect-fit-
ting corset-one for the measure, which is
taken very carefully; one for the fitting, when
only half the bones are in and the steels basted
in place, and one for the final examination,
when everything is finished. After one per-
fectly-ftting corset has been made, however,
only one fitting is required.
Corsets are worn most by actors, the fit of
whose garments furnish at present large pro-
portion of their stock in trade. Then there are
clerks who sit bending over desks all day and
half the night to whom corsets are frequently
recommended by their physicians as a help
toward Strengthening their curved spines, men
who, from some injury or physical imperfec-
tons, are obliged to wear them, and fair per-
centage of dudes who rejoice in small waist
and smoothly fitting coat. An ambitious cutter
in one of the swell establishments where q suit
of clothes may be purchased for the price of a
Drown stone DOCK, mas an IDEA OF winning an
helress for his wife at some popular summer re-
sort where he spends his vacations, and accord
ingly arrays himself IN all the elegance the es-
Enlistment affords. hooks himself into a
double-boned corset, and lays siege to the hearts
of the fair ones. Before he adopted the corset
he buckled broad belt of heavy leather about
his body at the waist, but as he grew stout this
expedient lost its efficacy.
A mans corsets are rs readily detected by
his fellow men as the faintest touch of rouge
on womans face is always discovered by her
sister woman. Gentlemen say that man in
corsets goes upstairs like woman, and walks
differently. and that if you observe him closely
for few minutes he will give little peculiar
hitch to his shoulders, as if he were endeavor-
ing to pull himself up out of the corsets 1t
was by watching Berry Wall mount a fight of
stairs that it was fully determined that he was
laced into snugly-ttting corset. His wife
accompanied him, and they made the same
motions in the ascent Both the king dude
and his roly-poly little chum wore corsets
regularly on important occasions. 1t was at
Madame Griswald's, on Broadway, that the
pink-haired dude returned a pair of baby blue
satin corsets, trimmed with lace after they
had been fitted three times, to have
them made half an inch smaller,
and his anxious perplexity was very
amusing to the mischieyous merry maiden who
fitted them on. 1t is no secret that Osmond
Tearle wore corsets, and that Kyrle BeIIew
wears them still The noble Antony has them
made in London in a little shop in Conduit
street. They are not trimmed with pink lace
or embeiiished with embroidery, which is the
only surprising thing about them, but they are
deiciously small and very short not more than
or inches up and down.
In the same shop the Duke of Beaufort has
the pink satin, lace-edged corsets, which he
makes no secret of wearing, manufactured and
embroidered with his monogram surmounted
by ducal coronet. He is an old, decrepit
man, with wrinkled yellow face and a fringe
OF white whiskers, and so bent over with age
that the line OF his corsets is plainly discerni-
BILE through his dress coat. 1t is said that the
Prince of Wales affects them. too, and that that
Is why he has abandoned horseback riding.
Corsets are worn quite extensively by men in
Paris, and all the handsome officers in the
German army wear corsets under their uniforms.
1t is the stout men that take to them most
kindly and who suffer most in wearing them
and 1t is limited that two of the handsomest
"dress-coat actors" in New York resort to their
use on the stage. Watch a man who never
leans back comfortably in his chair whose coat
does not pull in lines at every button or grad
ually work up toward his shoulders, and whose
chest Is unusually round and full, and if he
seems at intervals to be pulling himself up out
stairs with an inhexible back, you may safely
infer that he is laced into pair of $40 STAYS.
though he wouldn't admit il any sooner than a
woman would her shoes were too tight
"A man cares more about his shape than a
woman" said corset-maker, land will resort
to more stringent and uncomfortable measures
to improve his figure. A stout woman will walk
mile for two or three days and stop eating
candy for whole week to reduce her flesh, but
man will submit to the most wearsome pro-
cesses for the same purpose and keep up his
effort for as many months as his trainer recon-
mends. Place glass at the left of any public
stairway, and four men to one woman will turn
to look In 1t, and from these premises may be
drawn the double conclusion that men are more
vain than women, and that, were the stigma of
femininity removed from corset-wearing and
the custom adopted by fashion leaders, men
would fall in line very readily. There is no
more reason why they shouldn't suffer in them
than that women should be laced in them, SIM
ply because they look more trim and shapely.
In 1888 and 1910 corsets were worn by men, and
the fashion might be revived if few leaders as
courageous as the apostles Of dress-suit reform
would introduce the practice.
Bruin Ran the Shin.