FOR STOUT PEOPLE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 31, 30 July 1892, Page 768

FOR STOUT PEOPLE.

* Some years ago,’ said a remarkably stylish woman, • I became absolutely wretched and morbid on the subject of stoutness.

* I was getting stout very rapidly, and my dress had to be changed, and it worried me so that I was reluctant to make my clothes as large as they should have been, so I squeezed myself in and laced myself until I was the most uncomfortable, miserable mortal imaginable. ‘ And the worst of it all was, the tighter I laced the more out of shape I seemed to look. * I began to think that I was losing mv figure altogether, and half resolved to give up society and good dresses entirely. * About this time a good friend of mine came to me for a few days’ visit. * I was one day bewailing the situation when she gave me a bit of advice on which I have acted ever since with the most satisfactory results. * She was fairly plump herself, and her instructions were the result of experience. ‘ From that time on I have never put on a dress in which I was not absolutely comfortable. My waists are reasonably short with some arrangement of drapery falling from the bust below the waist-line, whenever the style of dress permits it. * I have just the least possible suggestion of a bustle, and the sides of my dresses are as nearly flat and without gathers or pleats as possible. * My sleeves are set well up on the shoulders, and any fulness is arranged in rather long, drooping lines. * Fortunately my neck is not so very short, and I wear my collars as high as possible. *1 find V-shaped fronts more becoming, and these are filled in with soft, black net, and inside of this is a narrow line of white. * My sleeves are opened at the outside of the wrists and buttoned over, but not so closely as to make my hands look large. ‘ My house dresses are long as I can conveniently wear them.

• For my ordinary dresses when I have certain things in the household to look after, I have a heavy cord which I knot around my waist. ‘ Inside ot this, I draw up the skirt of my dress at the sides and front, and sometimes at the back also.

‘ This keeps the lower edges from becoming soiled, and permits me to go about much more easily than I could were I burdened with the long skirts about my feet. ‘ I think the secret of becoming dress for stout women is a look of comfort and smoothness. Of course, there is just so much flesh. If you squeeze it in one place it must stick out in another, and this merely accents and calls attention to the surplus. The prettiest and most becoming dress I ever had was a tea-gown arrangement with a pointed yoke. The general effect was that of a Mother Hubbard with the pointed yoke extending almost to the waist-line front and back. A sash of sewing-silk grenadine was drawn around the waist, and knotted about one-third of the distance down the length of the skirt in front. 1 wore that dress one day when some friends dropped in, and they immediately asked me what I had been doing to get thin. Soft, clinging, light-weight fabrics, without lustre, are unquestionably more desirable for ladies with too much avoirdupois than any other material. Black and dark blue are the most desirable colours for stout women.’