The Delineator 1906 - Fashion and Features

In 1906, the issues of The Delineator were heavy on fashion as you might expect, being a women's magazine and being published by the Butterick company (they used it as a vehicle to sell their clothing patterns).  But it also covered other topics of interest to women at the time, including social issues (like child labor, for instance), housekeeping and cooking, health and beauty, parenting, and etiquette.

Some of the regular features that appeared in each issue in 1906:

• "Fashions in New York"
• "The Dress of Paris," usually with color illustrations.
• A large section with fashion pictures for women and children, with clothing and accessories.  This section included Butterick pattern numbers.
• "Some Heroines of Shakespeare" by their impersonators - written by a different actress each month about a Shakespeare character she portrayed on the stage.
• A featured house plan with pictures of the interior and exterior.
• Stories and pastimes for children.
• Needlework patterns.
• A Q&A column called "Good Looks" about skin care and beauty.
• "The Observances of Society" - a column about etiquette with Q&A.
• "Childhood" - a column about parenting, also with Q&A.
• "The Newest Books"
• "The Delineator's Campaign for Safe Food" - with articles discussing glucose, food colorings, etc.
• "The Progress of a Housewife" - articles covered cooking with eggs, common kitchen utensils, making cakes, cleaning, etc.
• Recipes, including one feature called "The Favorite Recipes of Famous People" that ran for several months.
• Travel articles
• "The Rights of Children" - column about child development that covered exercise, stretching, education, etc.

To start the fashion pictures, I have to include this image from an article defining the fashionable figure of 1906.  This figure is of course achieved with the aid of a corset.  "Its curves are more pronounced.  The bust line is higher and more prominent, while the waist tapers sharply downward under the arms, giving an effect of slenderness quite incredible . . . The sides of the corsets slant upward and outward from the belt in hour-glass fashion, and the same effect is seen in the spring of the hip.  The graceful curves thus secured are equally noticeable in the profile of the back."

Some of the fashions:

 

There were even patterns for robes and nightgowns.

I think I might like to return to the days when these were the bathing costumes.

And we can't forget about the accessories.  Shoes and hats, oh my . . .

 

Just to give you a sample of the types of advice offered in 1906, I'm copying some excerpts from two different columns.  The first is from the "Good Looks" column and includes a couple of questions from readers with answers from the columnist:

"Good Looks: A Regimen for the Stout"

Dear Dr. Rogers: I am a young girl of twenty and inclined to stoutness.  My hips are entirely too prominent and I fear that I am getting a double chin.  I eat very little fish and meat, preferring vegetables and dairy dishes, and I drink quite a quantity of cold water.  Do you think that by abstaining from bread I can reduce flesh?  I am rather tall and weigh one hundred and fifty pounds.  B.E.N.

With your height, you can afford to weigh one hundred and fifty pounds but you should not weigh any more.  Your diet is such as to increase your flesh.  You should avoid starchy foods, and most vegetables are starchy.  The old rule so often mentioned is to eat only the vegetables that grow above the ground and not those which grow in the ground.  Leave off eating bread with your meals and drinking water.  Do not drink milk or eat fats.  Possibly your frame is large, which causes the hips to seem out of proportion.  Those who have large hips make the mistake of lacing their corsets tightly.  That pushes down the flesh on the hips and exaggerates their size.

"Good Looks: The Effects of Massage"

A subscriber writes the following – There is so much said about massage for various defects, is there no danger for a beginner rubbing in more wrinkles than are rubbed out? 

Wrinkles are not easily rubbed in.  The skin is not wrinkled in that way.  It may be that one who does not understand what is to be accomplished and how to accomplish it, will not attain the desired results. Almost any manipulation of the skin and muscles with the fingers will improve the circulation.  It should always be borne in mind that the massaging to remove wrinkles is of a similar nature to that which would be employed to smooth the wrinkles out of a piece of silk.

And I was both fascinated and horrified, for reasons you will see, while reading this next column from January of 1906:

“Childhood: The Feeble-Minded Child” by Mrs. Theodore W. Birney, Honorary President of The National Congress of Mothers.  

To those whose children are blessed with full development of all their senses, may I beg that they will so train them that they shall feel a true sympathy for any among their companions who may be afflicted, and that they shall endeavor always to refrain from showing by word or look, that they are aware of any difference between themselves and their less fortunate associates.

As a rule, there may be said to be two classes of defectives: First, those that need scientific or institutional treatment, such as the feeble-minded, the blind and the deaf-mute; and, second, those whose education may, with some modifications, be conducted on lines similar to those of normal children, such as the dull or backward children and those whose hearing or sight is but partially impaired.

The term ‘feeble-minded’ or ‘backward’ is more acceptable to friends than idiot or imbecile.  Idiocy is a condition of arrested mental development. 

‘A high-grade imbecile is one who would be classed as normal, except that he occasionally betrays his feebleness by conspicuously foolish errors of judgment, or lack of common-sense, or weakness of will, or failure to comprehend common proprieties; and the so-called moral imbecile who only shows mental abnormality by a total lack of moral perception.’  Great progress has been made in the past fifty years in training the feeble-minded.  As Dr. Barr tells us in his book Mental Defectives, the first efforts were directed toward the idiotic or lowest grade of imbecile with the aim of arousing dormant faculties sufficiently to induce the habits of cleanliness and self-help.  The queer, the erratic, the eccentric, were scarcely recognized as abnormal any more than are those destitute of the moral sense, who are often accounted monsters of wickedness, “possessed of the devil,” rather than the moral imbeciles they really are.

The idiot is incapable of training except in the simplest matter of self-help.  The imbecile may, under training, become almost self-supporting, and does, under tutelage and direction, fairly creditable work in both industrial and mechanical arts.  Away from the compelling hand, without the constant stimulus of affectionate guardianship, his weak will and indolent nature would at once succumb.

A question often asked in schools for defectives is, ‘For what are you training the imbecile?  What place can be found for this child who never grows up?’  The reply, to quote an eminent authority is, ‘The Government is caring for the deaf-mute, the Indian and the negro; then why shall it not care for this race, which is at once more helpless and more aggressive, which is incapable of self-preservation, and fast becoming a peril to the nation?’  The unoccupied lands of the great West or the undeveloped portions of the Atlantic seaboard give free space and opportunity for permanent sequestration under happiest conditions. Colonized there under wisely ordered provisions, protected from society and society protected from him, safe from the temptations of a world which does not understand him any more than he understands it, the imbecile would be given the enjoyment of his freedom under law, and a true junior republic might be established for these grown-up children of the nation.

On that note, I will leave the year 1906 behind and see what changes might have come to The Delineator in 1907.