The Bismarck Tribune Newspaper, June 7, 1930, Page 8

Silhouette Mode, Latest Product of Paris Designers, Influenced by Many Outside Factors, Including Medical Profession and Health Authorities—Seen as Inevitable Reaction from Period of D isastrous Diets | By BARBARA BONSALL mee HE'S no longer the fickle R| arbiter of style she used to be. Like the human race, Dame Fashion has risen slowly from state of sem! cious: ness, scarcely aware of her powers. She has displayed, in her rise, an amazing ch pace. Majestic and rhytbm feebly mincing steps and a variety of uncatalogued gyrations have been included in her reper- toire. However, also like the human race, her progress has accelerated increasingly until today she stands out as a reliable force, whose fun- damental character is steady. Al- ways willing to adapt herself fo needs and laws, she is now reveal- ing herself as an obliging person, amenable to the dictates of com- mon sense, as well as the sugges- tions of science. All of which brings us down to the startlingly new and graceful fashions that have just been offer- ed by the coutouriers of Paris and New York for the inspection of the feminine world. Gone 1s the Gibson girl—fading memory of “Floradora” day with her full-blown, billowing cur’ Gone, too, is that aftermath of the war, the swaggering, flat- chested young thing lately known as the “flapper.” And now the flapper's more mo- dern 6ister, the extremely long, ex- cessively languid and unnaturally lean and angular one, is to join this defunct company. For when Dame Fashion a few weeks ago opened the doors of her numerous Fifth Avenue and Rue de la Paix establishments and is- sued her latest decrees she proved to the world that even an old lady may mend her ways. New Ideal The enlightened year, 1930, has brought a new ideal of feminine pulchritude. The “silhouette” mode, Us called, Wholly unlike any of the preceding fashionable ideals, it is an ideal, nevertheless, that always has been with us, for the silhouette mode is nothing more than the figure of the normally healthy and vigorous woman. Curves have come back. Not the violent curves of the “naughty nineties” but gentle curves and rea- sonable undulations in what, before the rise of the starvation cult, used to be considered the right places. And these, in turn, have sent the waistline back to its natural place. Sheath-like gowns are characteris- tic. Skirts are longer, nearly to the floor for evening wear, almost to the ankles for the afternoon and shorter, of course, for morning and sports. The evolution of the modern dress styles is, of course, a story of end- less elaboration. Every era—in fact every season—since Mother Eve cast aside the original and plucked for herself a new garment of fresh fig leaves, the world has had its “best dressed woman.” While all these have been soon forgotten, it is a curious fact that on the other hand this history records the trous- ers of George Sand and Rosa Bon- | heur and gives prominent mention to the other women who, in an ef- fort to reform the clothes of their sex, dressed in the most unappeal- ing garments ever devised by man- kind. Significant is the part that these faddists and reformers played in bringing the world to its present | day ideals of line and design, They failed in their efforts to foist their ridiculous extremes upon their sex but indirectly they made a contribution to this progress, de- spite the fact that every woman dress reformer would have been horrified at the sight of the intelli- gent and beautiful clothes of today. For one thing, they were all op- posed to tight lacing and they helped destroy the prestige of the corset. They made a contribution to this, but it was only a contribu- tion, for the corset and bustle and the trailing skirt and hop were all undone in the final anaysis by the factory and the bicycle, by the war and the motor car, by the tennis racket and the fox trot. Perhaps one of the most perfect types of the dress reformers who have infested all civilized countries was an odd little person, Mrs. Mary FE. Tillotson, who. has asserted that she was the first woman to wear reformed clothes in America. Mrs. Tillotson had heen for five nge of; «| mode. decollete bod id years she had the pleasure of seeing jher waist expand from nineteen to twenty-eight inches, Her waistline prospered but her propaganda did not. She enjoyed her martyrdom to be sure. She lived in the newly founded village of Vineland, N. 1, where for the first three years ec- centrics and radicals and cranks were joyfully accepted—the woods were full of them in that era—be- cause the village wanted new set- tlers. However, as soon as Vine- land grew prosperous it followed the invariable precedent, began to turn the cold shoulder to the strange ones and sought respecta- bility. Mrs. ‘Tillotson, with her “short” skirts and her trousers must have been a thorn in the flesh. For some reason it appears to be a human necessity to signalize a change of heart by a change in dress. “Perfectionism” Simplicity of costume was always a fundamental of “the good life.” One of the greatest of the American experiments was the Oneida Com- munity, which offered a new social system and a new theology—and incidentally held the distinction of being the only financially success- ful enterprise of the kind. Even after its other elements were dis- sipated, it remained as a manufac- turing center. One John Hum- phrey Noyes was the inspiration of this new religion which he called “Perfectionism.” The labor system, in which men and women all worked at all the jobs in fleld and factory, dictated a new dress. The women adopted “a bodice, loose trousers and a short skirt, falling just above the knee,” shaming Mrs. Tillotson and her nine inches from years “declining with dispepsy” | the ground. when she cast off massive flounces, | starched cordings and quiltings and corsets and lifted her dress defiant- ly nine inches from the floor, with “good drawers made like trousers” to take the place of petticoats. In- In the 1850’s, in Seneca Falls, lived a Mrs. Miller, daughter of Gerrit Smith, who has the dubfous distinction of having made the most sweeping statement about dress reform in the worst English efdentally in the following five sentence on record. Laura LaPlante demonstrates the curves and the proper places for them as demanded by the new welled chiffon gown, with extreme short tra widely copied, according to the styli jouette in skirt, 8. will be “Strive as you will to elevate women, nevertheless the disabilities and the degradation of her dress, together with that large group of |. false views of the uses of her be ing and of her relations to man, symbolized and perpetuated by her dress, will make your striving vain.” \Following the promulgation of so ponderous a dictum from her male parent, Mrs. Miller proceeded ‘to invent a “sensible costume.” If it was notorjety that-she wanted, fate was unkind, for an energetic neigh- bor adopted Mrs. Miller's costume and so {identified it with herself that the whole world still knows of it as “bloomer.” Mrs. Bloomer subsequently edited her own pub- lication which she called “The Lily.” The New York Tribune, de- scribing her costume when she lec- tured, said: “Mrs. Bloomer was attired in a dark brown changeable tunic, a kilt descending just. below the knees, the ‘skirt of which was trimmed with black velvet. The pantaloons were of the same tex- ture and trimmed in the same style. She wore gaiters. Her headdress was cherry and black. Her dress had a large open corsage, with bands of velvet over the white chemisette in which was a diamond stud pin. Public feeling on the subject of this costume led to small riots in the street and by the time Dr. Mary Walker, a more recent dress re- former, appeared wearing men's clothing she found such difficulties, including the ungallantry of Balti- more and New York police, that Congress finally enacted a special law giving her the right to wear men’s attire. The factory, which ‘demanded freedom of movement for its women workers and shorter skirts so that no trailing hems caught in the ma- chinery was a big factor in this Period of dress evolution. A sub- sequent stage came with the gym- nasium for college girls. By that jand Consummate actre: national b vocates of the starvation diet. time the fight for trousers had ended and new dress reformers car- ried the banner of simplicity, econ- omy and health, concentrating their attack on undergarments. The system advocated by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, with its union- suit, from neck to ankle, was ap- proved by the W. C. T. U. and the Chautanqua. Waists which she called Equipoise or Emancipation waists, to take the place of corsets chemiloons or chemilettes, were a feature of her system. Came the bicycle girl, and, fol- lowing the brief abberations of the harem skirt of 1911, and the hobble skirt of 1913, the final birth of the ares era of lovely simple clothes. Food Fakers Clothes were on the highroad but the sex still was to go through the | post-war wave of food-fanaticism. This fleeting ideal of the hipless | and curveless was as truly a war- time product as shell-shock and | civilian neurosis. The flapper was | an amusing novelty in the begin- | ning but she brought disaster to | her sisters before they awakened | to the consequences of this ill-got- ten mode. The American Medical Association through its journal flayed those exploiting the craze. Characterizing this feminine scram- ble to be slender as something which had passed all bounds of normality and arrived at the state of self-mutilation, Dr. Morris Fish- bein. editor of the Medical Journal, scored the endless number of get- thin nostrums and their magical claims of making wand-like maid- ens of middle-aged matrons. So alarmingly widespread became this exploitation of gullible women-| that the United States Government, through the Department of Agri- culture, issued the public warning: “In ‘view of the widespread of literature and advice of so-called diet experts it seems desirable to warn people against adopting the dietary recommendations of those without real scientific standing in the community. Some of the advo- cates of freak diets are sincere, but are themselves deluded. Others are fakers who seek monetary gain by advising peculiar systems of diet. Neither class can offer trustworthy advice. In most of the recommen- dations of these self-established’ ex- perts there is hardly a shadow of reason, though they may seem | plausible. “If the deductions of many food faddists, accepted as facts, were really operative, it would be diffi- cult to explain how the human race had survived. The race should have jexpired soon after man had prog: ressed enough in intelligence to exercise choice in diet and cook his food. The contrary holds true. Civilization advanced from the time man began to cook and prepare his food.” Physicians all over the country have been reporting the dire results from ill-advised dieting. The pas- |sion for the boyish figure gained such a hold on the feminine imag- ination that there was no length to | which women would not go to | achieve it. | | The present renaissance of the) gracefully moderate curve was it evitable, say all the high priests and priestesses of the atelier. Nothing could have warded tt off, for while Miss and Mrs. America were being extremists of the worst sort in this matter of food and fig- ures, they at the same time have been the most active members their sex has ever known. They drive, they fly, they walk more and far- ther, they go in for every form of sport, including those formerly re- served for their supposedly strong- er fathers and brothers. They strove mightily for a time to achieve the fatal ideal of the all-bone and no-flesh figure. The results were terrifying, including a sharp rise in the death rate for girls and women between the ages of 18 and 25, but the survivors have received the soundest sort of practical education in the laws of dietetics, They have learned that it is just as dangerous to be too thin as it is to be too fat. While no one, joutside of cettain backward parts of the Far East where avoirdupois is the measure of beauty, wants to first time in history Fashion - no longer is swayed merely by the idle whims of the socially elite, but now gives account to the needs of health and woman’s new and active mode of living. OLLYWOOD’S been having « good laugh at the ex- pense of all who have been taken in by the various so-called “Hollywood” starvation diets. While thousands of women have been torturing themselves and endanger- ing their health in the quest for the stylish figure, the stars of the movie lots have been enjoying their meals and slen- derizing at the same time. An undernourished and un- healthy body and the soft curves demanded by the new “silhouette mode” do not go together, points out Dorothy Mackaill, First National star. The real dietary secret practised by all Hollywood folk is that of the “balanced diet,” she says. Devised for them by some of the country’s foremost physicians and dieticians, the balanced diet merely means: ‘Ifyou are healthy and take a normal amount of regular exercise, adjust the amount of food you take to fit your individual requirements but check the following list every day to make certain that your diet includes some of the following: Proteins, among the least fattening of which are fish, lean meat, especially white meat of chicken and turkey, veal, lamb, eggs, beef, and milk. Avoid all fat meats. Regulating foods, among least fattening of which are spinach, celery, cauliflower, chard, lettuce, cabbage and tomatoes. Vitamins, in the form of apples, raw cabbage, eggs, grape- fruit, lemons, lettuce, liver, milk, oranges, fresh pine- apple, spinach, tomatoes. Sugar and starches, least fattening being fruit-sugars and crisp cereals. Roughage, least fattening being bran, lettuce, celery, cab- bage, spinach, eggplant, string beans, asparagus. They made the male heart do a double flop in the days oes grandfather was a gay young blade. With billow’ ‘ anced upon unbeliev: carry around excess poundage, American women have found that shattered nerves, influenza, pneu- monia, tuberculosis and a variety of chronic diseases stalk in the wake of the apostle of the trick diet. Tremendously active living and starvation cannot go together and necessity, in the guise of such ail- ments and breakdowns, forced ac- knowledgment that the human ani- ma! cannot continue without ade- quate fuel. ’ Add to this the heroic, organ- ized efforts of health authorities, doctors, insurance companies and all the other groups that have worked for the overthrow of the emaciated Venus and you come to the chapter wherein Dame Fashion admits the error of her ways, Balanced Diet Enter the so-called balanced diet, boon of the movie lots and hand- maiden of the “silhouette mode!” g curve: ible coiff the new fashions? Answer, the balanced diet. If too lean, the bal- anced diet should bring those soft- ly rounded curves. If too buxom, it will give you sufficient health and strength to withstand your re- ducing efforts.” . As expounded by Dr. Adolph Barr, ‘thé famous dietitian” and health authority— “Dieting to reduce 1s very dan- gerous unless the diet is a well- balanced one. The well balanced diet must contain all of the ele- ments needed to promote growth and to regulate the functions of the body. It is eating to excess that causes over-weight. The safest plan is to eat a smaller amount of all of the foods the body needs, and the natural result will be reduction in weight accomplished safely.” “Never was there a more sens- ible and more graceful fashion,” is the unanimous comment of the medical fraternity. “For with ruffles by the yard, and bi s, the Floradora Sextette embodi it hats precariously bal- the ideal of their perio the type of figure she desires today.” Boiled down to their simplest | terms, the principles of the bal anced diet merely mean that every reducing regimen must include three general types of food—those productive of heat, energy and stamina. There are many stand- ardized reducing menus in vogue. All are“based on ‘he principle of avoiding fats and starches. Aside from applying the test of whether they include these three’ essential types of food, the most. common mistake, it appears, is that of fol- lowing soft, semi-liquid diets. Lack of sufficient roughage such as bran, lettuce, celery, and cabbage, up- sets the normal regulation of the body and is responsible for much of the ill-health produced by re- ducing diets, Fashion, once the toy of frivol- ous court favorites who had noth- ing more important to amuse them, at last has stepped up to the Assuming they are as normally; health comes true beauty and true| place to which its powers and in- energetic and active as the great | happiness. majority of pur skirted population, how may dowager or damsel strike the happy medium demanded by A balanced diet, to- gether with a reasonable amount of | exercise, is all that is needed to fluence entitle it. This, perhaps, is the greatest significance of the new styles, Fashion has joineé sive every normally healthy girl hands with science.