The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1906-06-15
SIZE OF HOLES
IN Peek-a-Boo Shirt Waists May Be
Regulated BY Congress.

When Congress has disposed of thu
Beef scandals it may be called upon t.
consider the peek-a-boo waist.
Rev. Father George NJ. A. Shoerner
of Rochester, Penn. who interrupted
his sermon at St. Cecillia's Roman
Catholic Church last Sunday to ordel
two women from the building, ha:
created a precedent. He told hi;
parishioners to go home and take of
those bathing suits" adding. This
is a church, not bathing house."
The attention of the purity organi
cations is thus pointedly directed to q
threatening evil, and legislation may
presently be demanded to prescribe
the number and size of the holes in
the lingerie" waists, which shall ad.
nit the breezes and incidentally af.
ford tantalizing views of the shoulders
of the wearer.
Since the hue and cry over open
work hosiery, which began with the
merest pin-pricks and has now come
to a finish no thicker than face veil,
the matter of our national modesty
has had some fearful shocks in wo-
vans wear. Mere man might have
worn openwork socks and peek-a-boo
shirts till the crack of doom and no
one would have credited him with
more than an Ingenious desire to keep
cool. But the vision of pink plump
ness through these hide-and-seek ar
rangements which meet you. ON all
types of the female form divine is "a
horse of different color"
Had father Schooner been CONVEX
sent with present-day fashions he
would have realized that, as a mat
ter of fact, he was casting an unde-
served aspersion on the bathing suit
in comparing it with the peek-a-boo.
The bathing dress of today is infinite
ly more discreet than woman's street
garb. OF silk, or mohair, it exposes
only the throat. 1t reaches below the
knee, the black stockings are without
an aperture and the arms are covered
half way or quite to the elbow. Set
this demure figure beside a girl in cut
out embroidery waist and mark the
difference.
The linen is cut out in large chunks
to accommodate the design and the
effect is luminous. A large leaf of
warmly tinted flesh is charmingly out
lined in eyelet embroidery, or a piece
Of satin skin looms up as the cen
ter of a rose If it is a conventional
pattern you have flesh formed in
square and angles. More often-and
by far the most piquant-it is just
loles holes that have increased in
through the seasons; holes
hat give you Kaleidoscope and en-
visions. You gasp at i'm
lending revelations.
At first the excursions into the peek
-boo were as mild as the first open
work. stocking In the summer of !
900 it was confined to a modest little
oke which outlined a pretty girls
eek and gave such fleeting glimpses
f the interior decoration that it was
allied as a positive inspiration Our
escent has been rapid! By 1902 we
ad adopted graphic openwork border
} the yoke, which left in a question
o fight The year 1904 found us with
IS that strayed to unaccustomed
epths and apologized for themselves
18th large blue bows on the lingerie
eneath BY 1905 we had arrived at
panels" with islands of modesty be-
veen, and in the present year of grace
e have "a1l-overs"-an occasional dot
1 the openwork to save the situation.
he sleeves have risen from elbow
myth half way to the shoulder.
But this is not all. Some genius,
to keep pace with the times,
rs introduced the openwork corset.
We now only await shredded lin d
,rie before the fashions of the Fiji
land belle are accurately followed.
NV or the brown-tailed moth alone
n save uS--Naw York World IN