FIGURE CONTOUR

New Zealand Mail, 29 January 1902, Page 20

FIGURE CONTOUR

Some prophet has predicted that the year 2000 will find girls grown to the proportion of giantesses, and threatens the type of a seven-foot woman with a weight of 2121 b. Such a woman would bo more of a giantess than a goddess. The pronounced tallness of the girls of to-day is entirely due to the different manner in which they carry themselves, also to the accentuated waist line of the present, which gives the appearance of added height, and to the firmlybuilt heel that is the fashion for women’s boots at present.

Women gain far more in height through their elevation given them by their boot heels than men. A man who is tall will vary only slightly in his inches without his boots, but a most imposing woman shrinks much in height when she removes her shoes. The fashion of her clothing also adds or detracts noticeably in this respect. A gown patterned in stripes will make thin women look like a reed. It will take from the bulk of a stout woman, and if these vertical lines are carefully carried out in the details of her dress she can even approach slenderness of appearance. The disappearance of the feminine hip is another change in woman’s form since her curved shoulders squared themselves into their present form. Only a very few short years ago the fashion of sudden hips, as they were called, becamo virulent. These hips did not slope away from the waist in a downward direction, but bulged out from the belt line.

It was impossible to produce this effect naturally in such a short' time, although had the fashion remained there is hardly any doubt that woman’s accommodating figure would have grown into the lines required. The shops did a rushing trade in sudden hips at this time. They were made of ventilated pads of wire and of cotton, and the effect when a woman walked was most startling, as the artificial hip refused to undulate gracefully, but tilted as the wearer moved along, betraying its falsity with every step. Good taste speedily drove the sudden hip out of existence, but the hip natural remained in evidence. With the coming of the straight front corset the doom of the hip was spoken, and while the waist was allowed to gain two and sometimes three inches by the new ar- _ rangement the hips were harnessed in so that a fashionably-dressed woman today reveals only the slightest curve.