NEW PARISIAN IDEA OF WOMAN'S FORM.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue XIX, 30 October 1897, Page 579

NEW PARISIAN IDEA OF WOMAN'S FORM.

The fashionable woman of the coming autumn and winter must have a new figure. This decree comes from the modistes at Paris. It means, if adopted, a complete remodelling of womans form, the important agent of which is a recentlyinvented and oddly-shaped French stay. This stay, worn by the up-to-date woman, will do these things : It will extend out of their natural proportions the size of the hips. It will compress the waist to an astonishing and most unhygienic smallness. It will lessen and flatten the bust and give the wearer the appearance of an animated hourglass. But it will l>e adopted and worn with pride because it is new and startling, and has the sanction of the great minds that are given over to the study of clothes. It has lieen conceded that women would lace since the days of the early Greeks, when Hippocrates severely rebuked the ladies of Cos for so tightly compressing their rilis with their girdles as to interfere with their breathing powers. It remains for the ‘new figure' to demonstrate the varieties of lacing and the results of a certain style effected by the new corset. The physical culturists, the Delsartians and dress reformers have for a sc-ore of years lieen exploiting in every possible wav the gosiiel of the common sense waist. *They will lie deeply pained when they see the effect of the new stay.