Even in a surplice waist, length can be attained, as the illustration shows. Sleeve trimmings should be avoided that come even with the waist line. As you see, they give width where length is needed. Heavy stiff trimmings are difficult and must be very smart to be attractive. The softer, more slender the trimming, the better usually. Skirts should be designed to be free of flare.
Current fashions are always whimsical but back of every dress or underneath it is a foundation that makes the skeleton of the dress. This you must observe in every pattern you use or dress you buy. The trimming you can vary to suit your needs in slenderness, but your foundation lines must be suitable if you use trimming.
A variety of dresses are given, shown on the opposite page—the waist line dress, the narrow panel front, the wide panel front, the draped side line, and the tunic line. These represent good foundations and are in themselves slenderizing, providing you adhere to the code of long lines and simplicity in decoration and ornament.
Only careless persons can afford to buy clothes haphazardly. Even the slender woman thinks about them and plans about them. And just consider what a corps of helpers she has! A thousand hands to work to make modish clothes for the perfect 36, while only a dozen in proportion are working for us big folk! So it is easy to see why we must learn for ourselves what we can and cannot wear, what to emphasize and subdue. “We cannot eat our cake and have it too,” is a line familiar to us all. We can’t enjoy our pounds unless we work to dress them so that their number is not even surmised, let alone accurately guessed.
One clever woman I know, capable of making her own frocks and coats as well, visits the exclusive shops, buys the most becoming, simple dress that she finds, often paying as much as $200 for it. This she copies in other shades and materials, developing three or four distinctly becoming dresses at far less cost than the original gown. By averaging up she has modestly priced frocks, all smart, in good taste, and wearable.
I have always said that if I should ever go into the dress business, it would be to make slender dresses for big folks, and I would employ all big women to sell them, because, as I said about our jolly big friend, the corsetiere, she has an understanding heart, knows how difficult it is to find dresses that have enough youth, enough value in line, and are sufficiently becoming to us who tip the scales to any great degree. And she would lend aid to the discouraged soul that needs to seek and try, experiment and insist until she finds that which is becoming.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SURPLICE FRONTS
When the bust is full and the skirt length is short it is wise to use a panel effect in the front and let the belt or waistline finish extend around from side to side across the back, thus leaving an unbroken front line. As a rule, the large figure looks best in a very long waistline, but this does not apply to such proportions as these.
It is always wise for this type to beware of surplice front dresses. The mature figure, flat in front, can wear a surplice very well and often it serves to relieve an undesirable plainness. Many fashion artists, when they draw full bust figures, take special pains to put in surplice fronts, but experience will teach that it is very difficult to duplicate in fabric the easy, smooth curve indicated by the pencil.
