1930—Paris Frocks at Home
Lesson II—Be Yourself Dress Your Part
Cultivate your gift for clothes.
Be yourself as you are and as you want to be. The frocks you wear will achieve this ambition for you. You can create a charmed circle of admiration wherever you go simply by the way you dress. Cultivate your gift for clothes. The puritan virtues concerning dress, while still virtues, are no longer in fashion. Enjoy your clothes.
Happiness in wearing clothes is dependent, however, on some homely and revealing facts. You must know what you are really like. No one else, however, need know the whole truth about you.
You must have a long mirror and use it unsparingly in the best possible light. Unflattering daylight is essential. Then examine your contours and your proportions with the same critical eye with which Hollywood examines applicants for bathing beauty contests.
Having faced the brutal facts, be reassured. Think of what you can do for yourself that no "cloak and suiter" could possibly do for you.
You know somewhat vaguely that certain lines usually are becoming to you. Now you begin to understand why this is so. In making your clothes you will know that since you are totally different in build from Greta Garbo you will choose a pattern which looks more like you and less like Garbo.
Consider the necklines.
Take the matter of necks and necklines. There are short necks and long necks, thick necks and thin necks. The short necks must be given space. Don't choke them or muffle them or put strings of large pearl beads around them. Give them air. Deep V necklines add inches to short necks, both front and back; bateau necklines do just the opposite and frills, particularly starched organdie frills, completely choke the person to death. Long necks take kindly to rolled and frilled collars, draped blouses and unsymmetrical necklines, staffs, etc. If you have a long neck and a thin square jaw do not wear a square neckline.
How to minimize those hips.
Legs and hips must have our attention during our creative dress activities, not after the costume is finished.
Circular skirts with low flaring lines make both hips and legs appear smaller. Discreet exposure of legs by means of uneven hemlines or semi-sheer materials is much more flattering to them than exposing them against a background of a skirt which is long in back and somewhat shorter in front.
Broad hips accompanied by narrow shoulders is just one of those things which, being women and in many cases over 25 years, we have with us. Both dieting and dress must come to the rescue. Choose a pattern with a V bodice construction when you can, but be sure the V is in good position, standing right side up, with two of its points somewhere near the shoulders and its third point centered somewhere below the waistline. Do not draw material tightly around any of your round rear contours, nor for that matter, over a round tummy. Boleros, cape backs and jackets have a little swing that distracts attention from rounded contours below the waist. Soft blousing over a judiciously placed waistline often produces the desired effect. Place bows discreetly: on flat places—yes, if you wish; on contours—never. Consider the appearance of bows on large bosoms. It just must not be done, that's all.
Shoulders should get affectionate attention.
Broad shoulders are for the most part easy to dress, for the hips usually look slim by comparison. Unusual breadth and squareness may be reduced by setting sleeves into a high armhole or by using raglan sleeves. This lady does not wear cape sleeves or patches of embroidery on her upper arm. Narrow shoulders require sleeves set as far out on the tip of the shoulder as is consistent with a good fitting armhole. Capes are very acceptable. Shoulder epaulette yokes increase the apparent width of the shoulder.
Hands and arms cause real fits of depression at times, possibly because we can see them so plainly even when we are not studying effects in the mirror. Large hands are made to look larger and long ones longer by tight cuffs and sheath-like sleeves. If you hate yourself in a sleeveless evening dress, try fluttering squares of chiffon hanging from the shoulder at the back or a short cape sleeve reaching a little above the elbow.
Which ones of us wear successfully the dress with yards of bouffant taffeta below the waist—the robe de style? Well, there is the young tiny person, as well as the person who is small above the waist, but not so small below. Her defects are discreetly hidden by this type of dress. But what of the woman who is really matronly in build? No puffy bouffants for her. She would become terrifyingly enormous.
Advice to the voluminous.
The large woman receives lots of advice about how to dress, some of it unfortunately misleading. She is told to wear loosely fitting, flowing costumes, to wear trim, snugly fitting garments, to wear vertical lines avoiding, as she would the plague, anything horizontal in her clothes.
There is more than an element of truth in all these bits of advice, but they should not be taken too literally. For instance, the loose flowing costume had better be made of chiffon or something soft. Some suggestion of one's figure is desirable to counteract the appearance of mere bulk. The large woman often has slim hips and it seems too bad not to make the most of this good feature.
And about the waistlines.
Does the large woman wear the new dresses belted at the natural waistline? She often gets the impression that fashions revealing the natural waist are not for her. But it really depends upon where the belt is placed, and whether or not it is bound tightly about her. A suggestion of waistline obtained by some moulded fitting somewhere near the waistline or groups of tucks front, back or sides, skillfully shapes a frock without defining the waist. Diagonal seamings or set-in pieces in a dress may often suggest waistlines and produce "slimming" effects as well, when they extend from a point slightly above the waistline and descend gradually into the skirt regions.
After all, to be ourselves we must know ourselves, as well as knowing the fashions.
