FOUNDATIONS IN WAR TIME

Evening Star, Issue 23678, 11 September 1940, Page 10

FOUNDATIONS IN WAR TIME

War stresses functionalism in clothes, yet at the same time it also stimulates femininity. The more grim this world grows the greater the hunger for beauty. Women in this war have refrained from clipping their curls into harsh Eton crop, and from plastering their figures down into flat boyish lines with the old-time bandeaux and girdles. Instead, they are demanding thoroughly feminine foundations which will bring out the full charm and femininity of their figures. They are striving to bo what the soldier on leave looks forward to—the truly feminine woman.

Thus, war has not banished that most feminine of all garments, the corset—though it has considerably influenced its design. The trend towards practicability is seen more in England than in this country yet. To enable them to fit in with every kind of strenuous activity that may fall to woman’s lot before the war is won, on duty foundations are very short in front, most of them only about six inches deep. They are the kind of foundations one could cycle miles in, without being conscious of wearing a corset at all. It has taken the exigencies of war to bring homo to big women what prejudice has prevented many from accepting hitherto—that the new methods of control are effective.