It’s Smart To Sew This Fall

[excerpts from Fashion – Fall Winter 1950]

Life may suddenly have become very simple for New York and Paris designers.  They seem to have come to a tacit agreement on “the” silhouette of the season:  slim-as-a-knife.  But it’s small comfort for the more than three-fourths of us who bulge as no knife ever did, except maybe a Turkish scimitar.

Ready-to-wear clothes will be slim through the bust and beam – more so than we – or else too large through the waist.  Prices, they say, will be no lower.  For real fit, to give the optical illusion that we’re pounds lighter than we are, at a sensible price, the smarter gals will be plugging away at their little sewing machines.

Here are a few ways they’ll camouflage themselves as willowy:  they’ll adjust their patterns so that shoulders, waistline, side-seams are just precisely where they should be.  There will be no stretching of fabric tight over a bulge, sausage-like; rather the fit will be just shy of loose, so that you’ll get the benefit of the doubt on just how close their clothes do fit them.

Fall colors will be on your side, too, for your camouflage job.  The black-white combination of summer is carrying right over into winter because women have demanded a repeat on the flattery of the black for their figures and the white for their faces.

 . . .

Accents, in color or in fashion variation like checks and plaid, can draw eyes away from defects (hips, chubby legs, extra full thighs) to an asset (attractive hands, high bustline, firm chin) every time.  But such accents will generally be restricted to one splash.  They may line the wrap of a slim skirt to direct attention to a slim ankle, or they may form a bright one-sided pointed collar that juts off to the right of your chin.

Another fortunate fashion for the gals with girth this season is the stress on vertical lines.  Though the skirts will be up to 14 inches and higher, they will be so narrow at the hemline that many a slit will be necessary.  Some of these will be above the knee.  For those who oppose this, there are the wrap-skirt dresses, with a wide flap to permit ease of walking.

 . . .

Almost any fabric you choose for your suit, coat or dress will be right.  The variety shown in the Big City’s finest salons is endless.  Heading the list in a tie are velvet (and velveteen) and tweed.

It would seem that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Will women ever stop trying to hide the “flaws”?!  

But I will take any of the above suits in velvet or tweed . . .