The "Feminine" Woman

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 96, 18 January 1938, Page 4

The "Feminine" Woman

London Dress Designer's

Fashions

“What I want to do is to bring back into fashion the extremely feminine woman. To look well in the new dresses she must have a 36 to 38-inch bust measurement. These thin, broadshouldered women with cowboy hips and legs like a greyhound are out of date.” This is what was recently said by one of the youngest dress designers in London.

The ruling idea in fashion, according to this young man, is to persuade women not to be ashamed of looking extremely feminine, to cultivate the Mae West feminine outline, the curves, the slightly buxom appearance which many women at present despise. To be a “fat girl” is no longer a hopeless disadvantage. Sometimes it is an asset.

“With this idea,” he said, in an interview, “I have designed most of my dresses. For example, I have designed an evening dress in the empire style which can only be worn to advantage by the woman who is not ashamed of her figure—a woman with a 36-inch bust measurement and a 40inch hip measurement. “As this empire dress is intended to be sensational the woman who wears it will carry a walking stick . . . not an ordinary stick, of course, but a tall slender stick, specially designed for evening dress. “But the point is that the fashionable woman must not be a boyish personality. To be a woman of glamour, nowadafs, is to be a woman with a Mae West figure and a Cinderella personality.”

It was this particular designer who first introduced the mantilla fashion. A walking stick with evening dress, he says, is no more sensational than the mantilla.