Skinny is out of style
If you’re making yourself miserable because you can’t diet your size-12 figure down to a size 8, relax. Skinny is out of style.
That doesn’t mean that circus fat lady is in; simply that the scrawny, flat-chested Twiggy ideal of the ’60s has passed into history, and natural, feminine and reasonably rounded is the new way to look.
High-fashion clothes today are tenty, wrappy, blousy, graceful, away-from-the-figure clothes. There are caftans and chemises, big skirts and long, straight or belted over-blouses. They look great on perfect-proportion models, and can also look great if you’re a little top-heavy or hippy or if your waistline leaves something to be desired.
Fashionable women are going with the trend. Princess Grace, Ingrid Bergman and Candice Bergen, among others, have put on a few pounds and say they look and feel better for it. Women’s Wear Daily, self-appointed fashion adviser to the rich, famous and social, has publicly chided its favorite celebrity, Jacqueline Onassis, for clinging to the skinny syndrome. Makes her face look older, they say.
Top designers are all with it, too. Says Halston, who some say started it all with his caftans a few years back, “Being very thin is just for mannequins. A natural figure, with a round bust and round tummy, has been classical since the time of Greece.”
Bill Blass agrees. “A lot of women have discovered that they can look a lot prettier after thirty if they are not so gaunt. And, as most women realize, it reflects in their face if they’re too thin.”
Coty Award winner Calvin Klein says, “Women want to look less gimmicky. They are beginning to feel that it’s not necessary to look like a page out of a high-fashion magazine. Women won’t be told by any one designer or anyone else how to look. They will do what they want.”
So they will, and so they did. Because of course it was women who, because they wouldn’t — or couldn’t — conform to the skinny ideal, turned the fashion tide. The new easy clothes have everything going for them. They’re easy to wear, easy to move in and wildly flattering.
But what about the woman who is by nature skinny? Is she out of it? Not in the least. In fact, the new easy clothes are going to look even better on her.
