WHY LONG STOCKINGS FORM A PART OF BATHING COSTUME

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1222, 11 December 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHY LONG STOCKINGS FORM A PART OF BATHING COSTUME

They wear coquettish bathing suits at Long Beach, in which there is a very perceptible dash of ajstheticism. Very pretty caps are worn in the water, and silk stockings, some of them artistically embroidered. As at other resorts, there is a marked tendency in bathing costumes to fit the figure snugly and to be scanty—which is all very well for the plump and shapely. The innocent naturally suppose that stockings are worn because they pre vent an exposure of the bare flesh, thereby a shock te modesty of the wearers. “ Isn’t it this ?” a young friend asked me with some astonishment. He had been at the Beach several days, aud was desperately in love with a blue-eyed sylph, who wore dark blue stockings clocked with red when sporting in the surf. It pained me to tell this youth that a woman, who said she knew what she knew, had told me in confidence that it was not to cover up their legs, of which they are proud, but to hide their feet. “ By Jove 1 I never thought of that,” the young man said. The feet of these pretty society young ladies are often deformed, and their toes are crooked and have all sorts of protuberances. The sportive maidens are not born so. Tight shoes with high heels did it.