Resumo de Book Of Facts - Reader's Digest

FASHION- THE PURSUIT OF BEAUTY

MEET MR BEETON

Mrs. Isabella Beeton and her encyclopaedic Book of Household Management are justifiably famous. But her unsung husband, Samuel Orchard Beeton, has had an even more lasting influence on women: he invented the fashion magazine.
In 1852, four years before he married, 21 year old Samuel published The Englishwoman?s Domestic Magazine. With each issue, he gave away a paper dress pattern, starting, in volume 1, with ?A Lady?s Jacket and Vest?. There was then no ready-to-wear fashion trade. Mr. Beeton?s give away patterns and practical instructions in his magazine established home dressmaking, and gave fashion to the nation?s housewives for just the price of the material- and, of course, the magazine itself.

FALSE EYELASHES

False eyelashes were invented by the American film director D. W. Griffith, when making his 1916 epic Intolerance. He wanted actress Seena Owen to lashes that brushed her cheeks, to make her eyes shine larger than life.
A wigmaker wove human hair through fine gauze, which was then gummed to her eyelids. Intolerance was critically acclaimed but flopped financially, leaving Griffith with huge debts which he might have been able to settle easily- had he only thought to patent the eyelids.

WASP WAIST

For around 100 years, women laced themselves into ever-tighter corsets in pursuit of the 19th century ideal of the hour- glass figure. Wasp waists as tiny as 400mm, 375mm and even 325mm were claimed.
Photographs of the French dancer Polaire suggest that her claim to a 425mm waist was genuine, but anything less maybe anatomically impossible. An English museum curator, Doris Langley Moore, measured the waist of 200 Victorian and Edwardian dresses in Bath?s museum of costume: all were more ample, suggesting that the extravagant claims made were exaggerated.
For a modern comparison, the actress Twiggy, who was a legend of slenderness during her 1960s modeling career, had a 550mm waist.

POKE BONNET

Nothing evokes a more appealing image of demure 19th century femininity than the ?poke bonnet?. Yet it was originally meant to conceal the face rather than add allure to it. It devised by an aristocrat named Baroness Oldenburg in 1818 to hide her unfortunate looks- the bonnet?s side flaps curled around and all but covered her face.
Intrigued by the bonnet, pretty women of the day began decorating it with ribbons and flowers, and turning back its sides to give coy and provocative glimpses of their faces.
A straw version, common in 1880s, was adapted by Quaker women and, later, by the Englishwoman Catherine Booth for the new battalions of Salvation Army women- not because of its simple charm, but because the stiffened straw offered protection against stones and missiles hurled at the courageous girl pioneers.

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