The Beauty of the Legs

For your beauty — in the margin of the short fashion

Today, from this corner that so greatly concerns you, Madam, we shall touch on a few simple practical observations that will help you care for your beauty, and teach you the charms by which you, my sister woman, can preserve your complete elegance and play your feminine part to perfection. For elegance was, and remains, the aim of every lady: however high her station, or however far she advances in learning, there remains in the depths of her soul an insistent longing to obtain beauty and to take in the fullest share of it. Do not be ashamed, then, my sister woman, of this phenomenon, for it is bound by close kinship to the feminine nature, and there is no room for bashfulness about it or retreat from it. It is, beyond that, perhaps a necessary virtue: when a woman loses it she is stripped of the merits of delicacy and loses the most beautiful thing she owns. Woman, then, strives always to improve her outward appearance, and to my mind this is among the first of her duties — not in the years of her youth only, but in all the stages of her life, provided she observes moderation, does not overdo adornment, and does not rush to adopt the fashions as they are without making sure that they suit her.

The fashions, Madam, are harnessed to your service: use them in the way that suits your figure, and beware of following them with blind obedience, lest you become a target for mockery and ridicule...

Our great dressmakers return from Paris at the opening of every season with their satchels full of the latest fashions, and our women rush after them without any reckoning of the consequences. The short fashion, which made a return at the start of this season, has met with violent opposition, and I fear that only a very small minority of our women can wear the short style, once we know its effect on a lady's appearance. For it cuts down the height of the figure, so that in a short dress a lady looks less tall than she does in a long one; and it likewise uncovers the legs, so that the flaws show — excess of stoutness, or excess of thinness, or crookedness, and the like... And since the level of height among our women is middling, and nearer to plumpness than to thinness, one may fairly say: long dresses are, on the whole, far more becoming to us than short ones. Whenever any lady resolves to put on a short dress, let her first make sure that she is tall of figure, slender, and possessed of two well-proportioned, straight legs; but if she is heavy of body and short, she had better divorce this idea on the spot.

And since we are on the subject of the beauty of the legs — there are simple practical means, innocent tricks perhaps, that can turn the eye away from the legs' flaws. If your legs are heavy, then besides watching the length of the skirt you must pay attention to its fullness; and remember that dark, deep colors slim, and the reverse is true of light ones. If there is some crookedness in your legs, make the skirt longer than usual; and to hide their crookedness when you stand, set one foot a little forward of the other. Avoid wearing ornate shoes; strive instead to draw eyes to the upper part of your body — by artful wearing of embroidered blouses and of hats, for example... And let the heel of your shoe be high. But if your legs are thin, wear stockings of light colors, let the heel of the shoe be low, and avoid making the skirt of the dress full.