Tights

“ All of the men's jerkins or tunics are made on the simple lines of a man's shirt, opened a little at the neck and belted in at the waist.
The most inexpensive tights for amateurs are well-fitting cotton underwear, dyed the desired color. The children and Bertel can wear their own plain soft low-heeled slippers. The rich folk in the chancel wear their own slippers and draw on over them, socks dyed to match the tights ”

“ Boots, or outdoor shoes, do not attract me to anything like the same degree, although I have, upon several occasions, enjoyed myself fairly well by their use. Nude women repel me, and I find no pleasure in seeing a woman in tights. ”

“ The stockings were brought over these in a roll above the knee. Up to this time tights were made of wool, worsted, fine cloth, frieze, and canvas. The slashings, pleating, and gatherings of the period were of a much neater character, and punched patterns and pricked materials came into use.
Close-fitting high boots, generally with serrated tops and thick soles curving into a short heel, are features of this time. The shoe had a long front decorated with slashings (often caught with jewels) , and an oval toe which became almost pointed in the last years of this century. ”

“ The trousers may mach the habit or may be of stockinet, or the imported cashmere tights may be worn. Women who are not fat and whose muscles are hard, may choose whichsoever one of these pleases them, but fat women, and women whose flesh is not too solid, must wear thick trousers, and would better have them lined with buckskin, unless they would be transformed into what Sairey would call "a mask of bruiges," and would frequent remark to Mrs. ”

“ I look in the glass sometimes at my two long, cylindrical bags (so picturesquely rugged about the knees) , my stand-up collar and billycock hat, and wonder what right I have to go about making God's world hideous. Then wild and wicked thoughts come into my heart. I don't want to be good and respectable. (I never can be sensible, I'm told; so that don't matter.) I want to put on lavender-colored tights, with red velvet breeches and a green doublet slashed with yellow; ”

“ Now, madam, as a part of the present whole of modern dress, every one must admit that a slender waist is a great acquisition, and from my own experience and the experience of several young lady friends similarly addicted to guide me, I beg to pronounce the so-called evils of tight-lacing to be a mere bugbear and so much cant. Every woman has the remedy in her own hands. If she feels the practice to be an injury to her, she can but discontinue it at any time. ”

“ A tall young man, looking as if he had got a holiday from a tailor’s fashion plate, his hair sleek, black, and stuck down to his head with a cosmetic, his trousers so immaculately creased they seemed cut out of cardboard, led out a girl dressed in a skirt so tight that she could not have moved in it had it not been cut open to the knee. ”

“ A slip of a girl, who really hasn’t very much figure, can wear an extremely tight skirt, but when you are older and have hips to consider, such a skirt is quite out of the question. However, there is no need to go to the other extreme and wear old-fashioned clothes. It’s a fact that conservative, medium width skirts are in style season in and season out.
I might add a word about comfort, too. Wear comfortable clothes. No woman looks her best if her corsets are digging into her side and her collar chocking her, or her skirt whipping around her ankles every time she steps. ”

“ Ladies’ trousers should be of the same material and colour as the habit, and if full flowing like a Turk’s, and fastened with an elastic band round the ankle, they will not be distinguished from the skirt. ”

“ JOINING A WAIST AND SKIRT TO MAKE A ONE-PIECE DRESS. When a waist and skirt are to be put together, they are made separately and completely finished before they are joined. The inside belt of the waist, if there is one, however, should only be basted to the waist, and the inside belt of the skirt should be basted to the skirt but not sewed fast. When the waist and skirt are finished, put them on with the skirt over the waist and pin them together. ”

“ From a recently-published book I gather the following ideas, and as they coincide with what I am always impressing on my readers with reference to tight dresses and stays, I quote them gladly, as showing that there are other sensible women in the world, a class which I hope will every day increase:—"If you lace tightly, nothing can save you from acquiring high shoulders, abnormally large hips, varicose veins in your legs, and a red nose. ”

“ The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blasé man about town. ”

“ I have no doubt that what you have intimated with regard to the dexterities imposed by the skirt is quite true. There must be a certain important amount of muscular power not otherwise demanded in the current method of holding up the skirt with one hand at the back, or even in twisting the loose of it into a tuft on one hip. The habit doesn’t seem to be intrinsically pretty, yet it has that fascination which makes us wonder whether conventional ideas of beauty are of any importance whatever. ”

“ For the same reason, gents require a far more open style of cut than ladies. The remaining measures of waist, seat, size of knee, and bottom, are easily taken as far as trousers arc concerned; but with breeches, it is quite different. In those firms that make these garments a speciality, they ask the lady to take a seat, and lift the skirt over her knees and take the tight knee, small, and calf in the ordinary way. ”

“ Your habit-maker will, of course, put large hooks around the waist of your bodice, and eyes of corresponding size attached to the skirt, so that both may be kept in their place, but if you have been obliged to entrust your cloth to a country practitioner, who has neglected these minor necessaries, be sure you look to them yourself, or you will some day find that the opening of your skirt is right at your back, and that the place shaped out for your knee has twisted round until it hangs in unsightly crookedness in front of the buttons of your bodice. ”

“ The loosely-falling flaps of the waistcoat—the deep hanging cuffs of the coat—the easy folds of the long skirt—gave a character of courtliness to uniform which, to our eye, it at present is very far from possessing. ”

“ A skirt stretches because its own weight and the weight of the hem or facing draw it down. If you hang it up for two or three days properly weighted at the bottom, it will stretch as much as it can stretch and you can then hang it safely. Every woman who sews accumulates a lot of useless material which can be used to weight the lower part of the skirt. ”

“ The opposing force brought to bear by pushing the lower collar up, and the upper collar down, operates on the ribs to give shape to the hip portion of the skirt form closely resembling the human figure, and to oppose all tendency to contraction, caused either by the ribs being too closely confined by the tape, or by the tight adjustment of the skirt to the contour of the dress form. ”

“ When we wish to support the several pounds of skirts, the stockings, or any other garment, we look over the woman's body, to determine at what point such support, or draft, if you please, may be applied. To apply it about her legs, or about her waist, is precisely the same mistake that would be made if the draft were attached to the girth of the harness. There is only one point of support, and that is her shoulder. ”

“ Sit down, sit down!« With a savage light in her eyes, she threw off the knitted wrap, again baring her rosy shoulders and thin soft arms. »Why am I all wrapped up like this? It's hot here and I ... I must have been saving him! How kind!... Look here, you might at least take your trousers off. It's only good manners here to do without your trousers. ”

“ If through some small miscalculation the waist is too large, it can be taken in at the seam or darts if it is plain at the top. If the skirt is gathered, the gathers can be drawn a little closer. If it is plaited, the plaits can be made a trifle deeper. ”

“ Hitherto we have only spoken of the corset, and have avoided any allusion to the other articles of dress, which in many cases are equally faulty in their construction. Many ladies will say, and say truly, that they never lace tightly, but who at the same time, make the dress so tight as to completely crush in the stays, and, in pressing the unyield­ing bodice of the dress upon the folded underclothing, produce more evil than a tight corset would. ”

“ A glove that ends exactly at the wrist bone, or a boot at the ankle joint, with a straight line, is always ugly; so are dresses when they are cut in a circle close to the juncture of the neck with the shoulder, giving the neck a decapitated appearance. The line of contrast should always be softened with an edge of lace, or a necklace, and only round, pretty throats should dare such a display.
The skirt ought to appear, even if it is not, as a portion and a continuance of the bodice. That is,393 “if the bodice be cut to fit the figure tightly, the skirt ought properly to be plainly gored. ”

“ A young man about eighteen, without clothing, had the hide of the animal thrown over his shoulders. A woman, who performed the office of tailor with great dexterity, began by cutting the back of this new dress, following with her scissors the round of the neck, the fall of the shoulders, the semicircle which formed the sleeve, and the side of the habit, which was intended to reach below the knee. ”

“ Instead of the swelling curves which had been wont to encompass women, so that they seemed to float upon proud waves, skirts had become a species of swaddling clothes caught back below the knees, whence a series of frills clung tightly about the feet. ”

“ Their coat-sleeves are all-too-short, the legs of their trousers all-too-brief, their wrists and ankles, in startling contrast to their abnormally thin shanks and arms, seem over-developed. They are opulent in white eyelashes, blushes, mobile Adam’s-apples, affection, and honesty. ”

“ Styles change in underwear just as they do in dresses and the silhouette of the outer garment must decide what the lines of the under one shall be. For the present styles soft yielding materials are absolutely necessary for underwear and few flounces should be used about the bottom of the skirt if the clinging effect around the ankles and knees is desired in the dress. ”

“ She showed no desire to achieve grace or elegance below the waist; nothing more entirely unbecoming to the feminine figure can be imagined than the tight, hard, flat, narrow bodice terminating in a point at the front, cut off at the waist on the hips, above the monstrously distended petticoat. ”

“ This defective education of the dressmakers, or rather their want of knowledge of the human form, is one of the great causes of the prevalence of the old fashion of tight lacing; it is so much easier to make a closely-fitting body suit over a tight stay than it is on the pliant and yielding natural form, in which, if one part be drawn a little too tight, or the contrary, the body of the dress is thrown out of shape. ”

“ In France, women with blue faces and too often with the pulling lips of babes at dry breasts, learned the bitter tasks of sewing closed the coat sleeves and of cutting off and hemming the trousers leg at the knee. ”

“ The costume of most is limited to shirt and trousers, the material for which their own hands or those of their women-folk have sheared, spun, woven and dyed. Some of the better dressed wear trousers of blue and white striped stuff, of the kind now-a-days exclusively used for bed-ticking. ”

“ It seems to me that nearly all those who suffer from tight-lacing do so from an injudicious use of the corset, and in such cases the unfortunate corset generally gets all the blame, and not the wearer who makes an improper use of it. I can easily understand that a girl who is full grown, or nearly so, and who has been unaccustomed to wear tight stays, should find it difficult and painful to lace in her waist to a fashionable size ”

“ With the plain body the grace of the childish form is not lost. The body may be short or long, with the trimming at the bottom or edge of the skirt. The gathers fall in long lines or folds, no element of opposition destroying the rhythm and grace of the figure contour, when the trimming is placed at the bottom of the frock instead of several bands dividing the skirt.
The waist should always be wider in front than in the back. ”

“ Their costume is very simple, that of the female consisting of a leathern petticoat, reaching the calf of the leg, destitute of a seam, and often exposing a well-formed thigh, as the casualties of wind or position influence the artless foldings of the skirt. The leg and foot are often naked, but usually invested by gaiters and mockasins. ”

“ One of the great steps in personal cleanliness and therefore in culture made by our forefathers, was the adoption of a linen tunic next the skin, the “short” garment, or shirt. Again, a piece of cloth wrapped round the body and held up by a girdle forms the skirt or kilt, and the way in which Eastern women fasten their skirts together between the feet for convenience of walking, shows how trousers were invented. ”

“ These we shall say are feet standing within the radius of the skirt. Now the point of freest action in stepping for the feet B and C obviously lies in the direction of A. Toward A the foot B can move in the longest line without striking the skirt. Hence in walking the tendency for one foot to follow the other in the direction of A and the centrifugal tendency of the toes. As women learn to wear shorter skirts or wear short skirts a greater proportion of the time the likelihood [50] that they will be intoed will naturally decrease. ”