17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, September 5, 1912: Ditto.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Hmm—I guess that it was a slow week for Grandma. This is the third day in a row that she hasn’t written much. It seems odd. It’s the second week of the school year—and I’d have guessed that she would have been bubbling about the happenings.
In any case, I’m going to go off on a tangent . . .
Several days ago, a reader commented that in the old days that wealthy people were often overweight—or to use the term that was commonly used a hundred years ago, “stout.”
Her comment reminded me that the February, 1912 issue of Ladies Home Journal showed fashions for stout women:
Many distinctive features favorable for the woman who is included to stoutness of form are typified in the graceful, fringed wrap on the first figure in the group above. It is made of dull-finished black satin—for the stout woman will wisely pass by the more lustrous satins, which tend to accentuate plumpness.
A charming house dress for afternoon or for more informal evening occasions is pictured on the second figure in the group above. Here a soft old-rose satin is used for the foundation dress, brought into a subjection more becoming to the stout woman by the overdress of marquisette in the same shade.
There is a pleasing fitness not only in the quiet colors used for the semi-dressy tailored suit, but also in the right placing of the lines of the coat and skirt for a figure inclined to overfullness.
