After you have had this little seance with yourself in the fittings, get out your dress form, wrap it with cotton, cloth or soft tissue paper until it is as big as you are, put a straight line lining over it that fits you easily and yet perfectly, then put your dresses on it. Loosen them at the waist, ease the sleeves if necessary and work to add a little youth, a little smartness, a little trimness by means of additional materials used in a wholly intelligent way.
SELECTING NEW CLOTHES THAT WILL SLENDERIZE YOU
Now that we have improved the clothes on hand, let us think about the purchase or making of new ones.
If you make your own clothes you can work out the points for yourself as you adopt them. If you have a dressmaker, gain her cooperation. She may not understand the principles of “optical illusion,” but she will be delighted to have suggestions that tend to slenderize, and I am sure she will work with you happily in carrying out the ideas and instructions given.
A shirt waist dress, when all of one color, is often becoming, but the lines must all point downward and the waist line must be straight and easy.
In remodeling, as you see, a new collar has been provided, the shoulder shortened, fulness cut out at the shoulder, cuff narrowed to allow the sleeves to be lifted, the belt opened and lined to give ease and width.
The skirt was shortened at the top and attached to a camisole brassiere. The fulness of the skirt was brought around and tucked to give desired length line.
Before buying a new dress, suit, or wrap, study fashion pictures, dozens of them, and try to determine how your type should express the “new” in fashions. Choose what you like best in the new mode, cut out the pictures from the magazines and fashion publications, go over them carefully again and again, and determine by study and elimination what dress and wrap will give the best result for the money spent.
As an aid in obtaining other valuable pointers, when you go into the shops to try on new dresses, observe the saleswoman very closely.
She may not understand either what you mean by “optical illusion,” but if you understand the principles you can get a great deal of help from her for she will let you know at once what is out of proportion in your figure, what there is about your shape that doesn’t correspond to their models. She will invariably say, “I am afraid your hips are too big for that dress,” or “We have only a few dresses that will fit you. You are too large in the bust for that,” etc. Now, keep your disposition and listen, then determine to go home and concentrate upon making less conspicuous the part that strikes her as being out of proportion. Remarkable improvements may be made in this way and the “hardened” saleswoman can truly be of service, for she, unlike your friends, is not inclined to flattery unless she has visions of a sale.
