FASHIONS, WORLDLY
As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance.
—I Peter 1:14
1609 Dresses That Flash
What Diana Dew, 23, has done—and nobody thought of doing before—is to make dresses that switch on and off. By using pliable plastic lamps sewn into the clothes in segments and connected to a rechargeable battery pack worn on the hip, she has been able to produce minidresses with throbbing hearts and pulsating belly stars, as well as pants with flashing vertical side seams and horizontal bands that march up and down the legs in luminous sequence. “They’re hyperdelic transsensory experiences,” says Diana. Potentiometers on the battery pack allow the wearer to produce from one to twelve flashes per second.
The batteries themselves can be recharged by being plugged in, just like an electric toothbrush, and at full strength are good for five hours of flashing. “If a girl wants to flash for ten hours, she’ll have to get a bigger battery,” says Diana. She also is busy expanding the Dew line to include wide neckties (“flashiest ever”), a dress that spells out words, and even one that is wired to play music. There is always the chance, of course that one of her hyperdelic transsensory minis might break down. No problem. Says Diana: “Just take it to the nearest radio-TV repair shop.”
—Selected
1610 Barong Tagalog In Australia
A report has it that Australia’s Minister for Immigration, Al Grasby, has begun a campaign to get the “shirt jac” (the Philippine’s barong Tagalog) adopted as proper dress for formal parliamentary occasions.
He also said that “ties and coats should be virtually outlawed as normal parliamentary dress.” “It’s quite ridiculous wearing ties and coats in our climate,” Grasby said.
Grasby said he was forced to appear in the House without tie and coat following an interruption to a parliamentary dinner he was giving for ambassadors to Asian and Pacific countries.
He said: “I had been presented with this magnificent barong Tagalog during my trip to the Philippines and thought that I should wear it to the dinner.
“When the division bells rang, I had to leave the dinner and just did not have time to change.
“When I appeared in the House in the jacket—which is a bit of mixture between the Nehru coat and a Mao jacket—there were a few comments but nobody really minded.”
1611 “Big” Business
Size 52 hot pants? It sounds improbable, but a cheerful 300-pounder named Nancy Austin not only wears them but markets them. She is drawing customers from all over the U. S. for custom-designed fat-lady clothes. Until she began selling her bright, fashionable originals at a small shop in Las Vegas, clothes for chubby women were mostly dismal, shapeless outfits intended primarily for camouflage. Nancy has other ideas. Her shop, which opened in 1970 on a skinny $5,000 investment, grossed nearly $100,000 the second year.
Sales figures like that are produced, in part at least, by avoiding the use of words like fat. Nancy calls her customers “queen-size ladies” and is equally tactful about sizes. “Most stores call you small, medium, large or extra large,” she says, “but in our shop you’re Petite (size 16 to 20), Coquette (size 22½ to 26½) or Mademoiselle (26½ to 32½).” Anything larger ranks in the Duchess class. Nancy herself is in the Mademoiselle bracket, and she has ordained that all her models and sales personnel must be at least size 16.
Nancy Austin believes that her clothes make fat women feel happier.
1612 Gunny Sack Dresses
A lady looked all over a dress shop in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, for something that she liked and could wear. Her final selection startled the proprietor and gave her a new idea. The customer purchased a gunny sack that was covering one of the mannequins during the period between seasons! The dress shop began offering the gunny sack dresses to other hard-to-please customers as well. And it became a fad in the early 1970s.
1613 Tailoring By Laser
Montague Burton, a British clothing chain, is experimenting with automatic custom tailoring by laser beam. As envisioned, the system includes a stereoscopic camera coupled with a computer which records on tape a topographical map of the customer’s body. The tape then guides a laser beam in cutting suit fabric to match the individual’s shape.
—The Insider’s Newsletter
1614 IBM Cracks Down
With the possible exception of Secret Service men, no employees in the nation are as well-known for their square appearance as the men of IBM. Most of them wear pretty much what was in style two or three generations of computers ago—dark and unshaped suits, white button-down shirts and quiet, narrow ties.
Lately, however, some staffers have begun to acknowledge the revolution in men’s fashion by showing up for work in loafers, striped shirts and flared trousers. To Thomas J. Watson, Jr., IBM’s chairman, the whole trend was clearly unacceptable. And so, in a memo reported in the Wall Street Journal, he let employees know exactly what he thought about it.
Watson’s note, sent to IBM managers, warned that “too many of our people are beginning to exceed the bounds of common sense in their business attire.” Because “the midstream of executive appearance is generally far behind the leading edge of fashion,” he continued, modish threads might well offend potential IBM customers.
The IBM chairman decided to give each manager “the responsibility to establish and enforce conservative dress and appearance standards.” Watson did not dictate a specific uniform, but to most employees his message was clear: back to the button-downs. The sartorial retrenchment at IBM, so the story goes, was inspired by a young man in hippie clothes who happened to catch Watson’s eye one day in a bank. When Watson asked a bank official why he permitted employees to dress that way, he was quietly informed that the man in question worked for IBM.
—Time
1615 Oversized Lips As Beautiful
“Nowhere in the world,” says a traveler, “do people have stranger opinions about beauty than the women among the Saras-Djinges tribes in Africa. The distorted lips of these Central-African belles is one of the most astonishing customs in the world. Their lips are pierced with wooden discs of increasing size till the lower lips is distended to such an extent that 12-inch soup plates can be worn. The enormous overgrowth of lip makes chewing of food impossible, so these women must live almost entirely on a liquid diet. Speech is also almost impossible, and so difficult that they do not make anything but the most necessary splutters.
“When a girl is about four years old her future husband makes a hole in the centers of her upper and lower lips with a knife and small pegs of wood are placed within. Gradually the sizes of the pegs are increased until by the time she has reached womanhood her lips are esteemed to be things of beauty.”
—Christian Victory
1616 Flat Heads and Crossed Eyes
A very peculiar feature of the culture of Palenque, one of the lost cities in the Mayan civilization, was that of tying the heads of newborn babies to boards—one in front and one in back. After several days, the head was flattened for life. Crossed eyes also were prized as marks of beauty, and mothers sought to induce that condition by dangling baubles between the eyes of babies.
1617 Chorus Girls Set Persian Costume
Nasr-ed-din, Shah of Persia, while on a visit to Paris in 1873 attended the opera and was so entranced by the beautiful dancers in the ballet that he ordered an aide to go backstage and purchase the front row for his harem. When the Shah learned the girls were not for sale, he did the next best thing which was to buy and take home several hundred ballet costume. Believing the abbreviated skirt was a “new look” from Paris, the ladies of Persia adopted the costume and wore it indoors for more than 50 years
1618 Phyllis Went Home And Died
From history comes this story of Phyllis and Brunetta, rival beauties of the ancient world. For a long time, they had vied with each other on quite equal terms. But during a festival, Phyllis bought some splendid fabric of gold brocade to outshine her rival. But Brunetta dressed her slave who was holding her train in the same material, clothing herself in simple black.
1619 Fashion Made In Hell
There is a curious fable or myth, either Italian or German in its origin, which represents the devil as plotting to mar the image of God in man, and consulting with his grandmother in hell. He forms four successive plans before he satisfies himself and his grandame.
First, he proposes to implant in man’s heart the lust of evil. But this plan has the defect that evil will be recognized as such and be repelled. Then he plans to make him a monster of self-love and self-will; but even selfishness will appear to him to be monstrous and hateful. Then Satan plans to pervert his moral nature, so that he shall mistake right for wrong, and wrong for right. But the difficulty again, is how shall man be so perverted?
The fourth plan is a master-device. He will ensnare man by things seemingly innocent—love of dress and temporal goods. He will feed man vanity and make him the slave of fashion. Man will say all this is not in itself wrong; there can be no wrong save in excess; and, while he is philosophizing, he shall be drawn into excess.
The old grandame is represented as casting her old serpent skin, glowing with rainbow hues, and Lucifer takes them as the material out of which to form the gay attire of fashion.
And then there was jubilee in hell over the triumph of Satanic ingenuity.
—Selected
1620 Mini-Skirt Menace
According to The Law Officer magazine, “since the mini-skirt was introduced by London designer Mary Quant in 1964, incidents of rape have increased by 68 percent in the United States and by 90 percent in England.” The rise in mini-skirts has caused a corresponding rise in rape and incident assault cases.
1621 Epigram On Fashions (Worldly)
• Lin Yuting, (Chinese philologist, essayist, and miscellaneous writer): “All women’s dresses are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and unadmitted desire to undress.”
• Comedian Milton Berle quieted a ringside woman heckler the other day by saying, “You did the same thing to me in 1946—I never forget a dress.”
—Earl Wilson
• The pastor was visiting the various departments of the Sunday School and paused before a class of young teenage girls. “I am glad to see so many shining faces this morning,” he said.
Whereupon every girl reached for her powder and mirror.
—Paul E. Holdcraft
• As to matters of dress, I would recommend one never to be first in the fashion nor the last out of it.
—John Wesley
See also: Art World ; Hair, Long ; Music, Modern ; Worldliness ; Titus 2:12; James 4:4.