Historically Hip: Empire Waist

Fashion loves to reinvent itself - and some of the most popular and most often recurring cuts go very far back indeed.

One of my own favourite cuts is the empire waist line. It makes short people look tall! It was first made popular during the neo-classical period and reached its first peak at the time of Napeoleon's coronation, at which Napoleon's sisters (who might also have been quite short) wore dresses sporting this particular waist line.

It was a time when women became delicate and fragile - sensitive rather than sensible. Schopenhauer was arguing that men were logical thinkers and women were too emotionally unstable to participate in the shaping of society. Perhaps because this became the dominant view, female fashion became more sexual (think Jane Austen adaptations and their emphasis on the heaving bosom, which always almost plunges out of a deeply cut dress - only kept in by a thin veil of fabric), while men's wear, which up until then had been every way as flamboyant and vain as women's wear, became dull, drab, and very serious indeed.

Today we may not particularly do our very best to push up so badly that we fall out of our clothes, however, the empire waist line remains as popular as ever.

Unfortunately this cut in combination with an A-line or full skirt can become an attempt at camouflaging belly fat. It was in part what made it popular in the first place (women were after all birth giving machines), but really girls, let's not abuse it like that. Let's still use it to emphazise and enhance rather than to hide.