Waistline "Extended"

Fashion is a jade, as men well know. Her changeableness, as exemplified in women's styles, is mighty exasperating, but she usually succeeds in catching the male eye. Of late, with the return of corsets that made the female figure recognizable from any angle, Spectator Man has found little to jeer at, much to applaud. But by last week, Fashion's winsome mood seemed to be changing again, and men were bracing themselves for the usual series of nasty little jolts.

Hats, which had lately been, at worst, ridiculously appealing and, at best, downright becoming, threatened to go unattractively cockeyed again--"winged hats," "haloes on a bender," "Milans with tuzzy-muzzy topknots." But men were hardened to nonsensical headgear. What really dudgeoned them was the other extreme--shoes, which had become as hideous as anything in man's long-suffering memory: solid-heel-and-soled, club-footed dumpers, reminiscent of Clementine, the miner's daughter.

When it came to corsets, men feared the worst, hearing tell of a new outline called the "long torso." This sounded like a threat to return to the hideous, bag-shaped style of the '20s, when theflour-sack dress flourished and the straight line conquered all. But it seemed last week that the "long torso," alias the "extended waistline," was just another false alarm. Even the stylists could not make sense of it. Wrote Carmel Snow, in Harper's Bazaar: "It's not a lower waistline, or a higher waistline. It starts exactly at its natural, rightful indentation and extends both up and down, to give you a firm lithe line like the stalk of a flower. Sometimes the effect is achieved by a yoke over the hips, or the placing of pockets. . . . The new suits accomplish it by longer jackets."

Spectator Man sighed with comparative relief, settled back into his yoke, put his hands in the pockets of his new four-button coat, and waited for spring.

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