Morning journal and courier., 1889-04-15
CORSETS FOR MEN.
Recommended for Adoption by Clerks
 Dudes and Fat Gentlemen.


 Corsets for men are worn most by actors. the fit of whose garments furnish at present large proportion of their stock in trade, says the New York Sun. Then there are clerks who sit bending over desks all day and half the night, to whom corsets are freQuent- ly recommended by their physicians as a help toward straightening their curved splnes' men who from some injury or physi- cal imperfections ars obliged to wear them and fair percentage of dudes who rejoice in a email waist and a smoothly fitting coat. An ambitious cutter in one of the swell es- tablishments, where suit of clothes may be purchased for the price of brown-stone block, has an idea of winning an heiress for his wife at some popular summer resort where he spends his vacations, and accord ingly arrays himself in all the elegance the establishment affords, hooks himself into 8 double-boned corset, and lays siege to the hearts of the fair ones. Before he adopted the corsets, he buckled broad belt of heavy leather about his body at the waist, but as he grew stout, this expedient lost it's efi- cacy.
 A mans corsets are as readily detected by his fellow men as the faintest touch of rouge on womsn's face is always discovered by her sister woman. Gentlemen say that @ man in corsets goes up stairs like a woman and walks differently, and that If you observe him closely for few minutes he will give a
 
 were endeavoring to pull himself up out or the corsets. It was by watching Berry Wall mount flight of stairs that it was fully de- termined that hs was laced into snugly ft- ting corset. His wife accompanied him, and they made the same motions in the ascent Both the kiog dude and shis roly- poly little chum woreseorsets regularly on important occasions. It was at Mime. Griswald's on Broadway that the pink-haired dude re- turned pair of baby blue satin corsets trimmed with lace, after they had been ft- ted three times, to have them made half an inch smaller, and his anxious perplexity was very amusing to the mischievous merry maiden who fitted them on. It is DO secsrt that Osmond Tearle wore corsets, and that Kyrle Bellew wears them still. The noble Antony has them made in London in little shop in Conduit street They are not trim- med with pink lace or embellished with ems broidery, which is the only surprising thing about them, but they are deliciously small and very short, not more than six or eight 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 sur mounted by a dueal.corouet. He is an old, deerepit man, with wriEkled yellow face and fringe of white whiskers, and so bent over with age that the line of his corsets is plainly discernible through his dress coat 1t is ga i'd that the Prince of Wales effects them, too, snd 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. Though cor sets worn by men in New York, i. is ex- trenely difficult to find out where they are made. There is no special manufactory for them; and, though most of the frst-class coIset places receive orders for them occas- m ject, for any publicity given to the fact would destroy the business altogether. There is one bright woman corset maker on Fourteenth street who advertises to make 8 speciality of mems cofsets, and receives a great many orders, which she fills simply by taking womens corse:s of large size and re- moving the gores in the bust, and taking out some of the fulness at the hips. Mer- chant tsilors would hail with delight the general use of corsets as they would render the fitting Of garments much easier, and en able them to keep smooth and in shape much longer. It is the stout men who take to them most kindly and who suffer most in wearing them, and is is hinted that two of the handsomest "dress- coat actors'' in New York resort to their the stage. Watch the man who never leans back comfortably in his chair whose coat does not pull in lines at shoulders, and whose chest is unusally round and ful, and ii he seems at intervals
 
 by the shoulders and goes up stairs with an infexible back, you may safely inter that he is laced into pair of $10 stays, though he wouldn't admit it any sooner that a woman would own her shoes were too tight.
 "A man cares more about his shape than a woman," said corset maker, land will re- sort to more stringent and uncomfortable meausures 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 sub- init to the most wearisome processes for the same purpose and keep up his effort for as many months his trainer recommends. Place glass at the foot of any public S air way and four men to one woman will turn to look in it, 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 Ill them than that women should be laced into them, simply because they look more trim and shapely. In 1888 and 1S40 corsets were worn by men, and the fashion might bs revived if few leaders as cour ageous as the apostles of dress suit reform would introduce the practice"