Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-05-03
A C|RL|SH FIGURE
Can Be Preserved by the 18th
Century Corset.
SIX ST Us IN A SET
FOR DREss-UP AND OUTDOOR Ex-
ERcIsING.
The Way to Keep PLANT Figure
Even to a Great
Age.
SIX STAYS IN A SET
Written for The Evening Star.

Written for The Evening Star.
Longer and ever longer waist ed grows
the fashionable corset. The designers of
stays evidently regard the feminine form
divine as mere clay to be nodded to suit
their ideas of grace and symmetry. From
Paris still receive the law on figure
building, and in Paris the types of Louis
XIV have been revived In the days of that
merry monarch flesh, was considered q
gross vulgarity. and when woman could
no longer maintain a tapering, rigid slen-
derness of waist and hip she bid farewell
to court and king and hid her too rounding
curves in the depths of some remote coun-
try estate.
Today the portraits of Madame Pompa-
dour, of Marie Antoinette, of the Duchesse
de Chevreuse, of du Barry and other beau
| ties of Louis XIV court, hang about the
corset makers fitting room, and what with
a scientific cut, guaranteed stitch with
silk and linen laces and a wrist like iron
she can put a 160-pound woman into a
Louis corset and in an instant produce the
optical delusion of reducing her to bare
135 pounds.
From Paris these new methods and ma
terials have been brought to this country,
and the women who take their clothes and
their figures very seriously are being boned
and laced into eighteenth century lines as
fast as agile fingers can cope with their
pounds and a skillful designer can take
their measurements.
Mathematical Corsets.
AS rule the fame and fortune of a cor
set establishment rests almost wholly on
the designers shoulders, and she is Paris
bred or Paris trained. Her business is to
take each patron under consideration,
measure her carefully and then estimate
automatically the inches of contract or
expansion required for her hips, bust or
waist line. Every customer is considered
individually; for no TWO in succession will
the same stay serve, while the question in
variably propounded in the order room is
whether the new customer wants a morn
ing or an evening stay, a single pair or a
set. A set of corSetS includes six pairs, one
for walking. one for with afternoon
gowns, a dancing pair, a pair to be worn
when motor driving, tea gown and neg
lige pair and sporting pair. suitable when
riding, golfing and playing tennis and ping
pong.
Costly Sets of Stays
In Frenchy and fashionable corset estab-
iishment, where you choose all your own
materials and are assured that the purest
whalebone and ihandstitching are ex-
pended in the makeup of each garment
you can easily spend from 500 to $500 on a
set. For the evening stays white or faint
~ colored MORE silk is what the designer
advises as the most elegant novelty, and a
wonderfully stout taffeta. picked out in wee
stars or dots is the choice fabric for the
sumptuous afternoon pair. For the others
ribbon. silk net. linen lace, fine diapered
linen. silk warp batiste and very fine satin
coutll are recommended. Real lace trim
ming, embroidered monographs and silver
hooks are among luxurious details of finish
INDUCED in by very rich women.
The Pompadour.
Not alone in material, but in shape and
method Of adjustment do these new stays
reveal all manner of surprises. There is,
for example, the pure Pompadour corset
that opens only in the back It's front is
boned so that an abnormally long line runs
almost perpendicuarly from bust to abdo-
men, and only in the rear does it curve into
the waist For stout women powerful hip
suppressors adjusted to the side. These
lace separately, and to aid in further con-
troll of the flesh heavy elastic suspenders
incased in shirred silk, run down and catch
the top of the stockings
With Three Openings.
Another corset particularly designed for
the quelling of obtrusive pounds is a stout
contille walking stay that not only laces up
the rear and hooks up the front, but also
laces up on both sides. It is called the
"Aphrodite." Not one of these corsets. by
the way, is heavily boned, nor is the new
idea to sheath the body in steel Properly
woven goods, well cut and fitted and re-
1nforced with the best whalebone, are the
means whereby slenderness and grace are
gained A stay too heavily steeed merely
adds bulk and renders it's wear painful and
injurious and bulk is the curse of modern
high living that the scientific corset has
contrlVed to circumvent. When an eXpen-
slVe set of corsets are sentshome nowadays
they arrive all fitted with the proper sort
of hose supporters or elastic suspenders
and when the stays themselves are very
costly the supporters are incased in shirred
silk, decorated with huge ribbon bows and
provided, in some instances, with golden
clasps for catching the stocking Every
corset Is rolled about a long satin sachet
cushion and is laid in it's own box, that is
covered with Silk to match it's pink or blue
contents. Sometimes the stays are sent
home in pretty bags of brocade that hang
up by straps in the owners closet along
side the gowns with which they are to be
used.
An Authority Talks.
While the corset designer and filter has
a customer in hand they keep up, as a rule,
a running fire of comment as to the best
way for preserving the pliancy of the figure
and deplore the habit, followed by many
women, of wearing but pair of stays
through a season. Venus herself would be-
come set ana hard in outline should she
come to life today and follow such prac-
tice. The least extravagant woman in the
world can afford to keep two pairs of stays
going by alternating them from day to day
More pretty figures are ruined by the one
pair of stays per season than by flesh or in
difference, said corset maker of author
ity, land the slouchily worn stay is one of
the prime reasons for the increase of flesh
as women grow older. Change your stays
every time you change your gown and you
will keep the girlish contours of waist
back bust and hips long after the wrinkles
have come and your hair is white as cot
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