Lorna Jane has a fit model problem

Boutique activewear brand Lorna Jane is currently enduring a severe tutting from the online media after it posted a job advertisement for a dual role at its HQ: as a receptionist and a fit model.



My initial response was to tweet: "Fit model is a legit job that needs specific body dimensions. But Lorna Jane shouldn't combine it with another job. Obviously anyone can do a receptionist job; but not everyone can be a fit model. Your measurements need to embody the brand's sizing."

Fit modelling isn't 'fitness modelling' – which is a genre of modelling in which the models look athletic and have very defined muscles and very little body fat. Rather, fit models work in the back end of the industry. Unlike regular models, who get booked by matching a designer, art director or stylist’s desired ‘look’, fit models stay employed by winning another kind of genetic lottery – possessing a body whose proportions match the vital statistics of a manufacturer’s target customer.

When I was writing Out of Shape, I did a fair bit of research into fit modelling that didn't make it into the final book. There really isn't very much discussion of this fascinating subset of the modelling industry – just as we prefer to concentrate on the glamorous world of fashion weeks and couture rather than the nuts-and-bolts business of garment production.

At many clothing manufacturers, employees step in as fit models when required, in addition to their regular jobs. And at some fashion labels – including, famously, Leona Edmiston – the designer uses himself or herself as the fit model. (I wish I could've got one local designer to go on record with his yarn that, having used himself as his fit model, his sizing began to get smaller when he lost weight – something he only realised when a longtime customer pointed it out.)

Kathleen Fasanella – who to me is the authoritative resource on the technical aspects of fashion – had a great two-part blog series about fit modelling. Natasha Wagner has fitted for jeans brands ranging from Gap and Old Navy to Levi's, 7 For All Mankind and Proenza Schouler, leading Vogue to dub her "the model whose bottom is shaping a nation". And here are some fun first-person accounts by Sable Yong, who at 5'2" works as a fit model for petites.

When I interviewed Clea Garrick of Australian fashion label Limedrop, she told me she tests her sample garments on several fit models who wear a size 8 differently – taller or shorter, and with varying body proportions – so she can get a sense for how each garment will look on different body shapes, not just sizes.

“We still do make garments that are fluid and flowing, so our sizing is not as strict on some pieces as they appear in measurements,” she added. “We aim to make fashion that looks great on real people, not just models.”

Lorna Jane, on the other hand, needs a fit model more than many fashion labels because all its products are form-fitting and stretchy. The way tight clothes compress the body can't properly be predicted from using industrial fit mannequins, which is why it's so important to use a live model who can report how the tightness feels.

When I looked at the the websites of specialist fit modelling agencies, I was struck by their galleries of pretty girls, photographed at full length and labelled with specs of height and body measurements. The effect is slightly unnerving – like a flipbook of mugshots or mail-order brides. They all hover around a standard Australian size 8-10, and all have a similar svelte, leggy look.

Yet it’s heartening and strangely touching to see how even these girls, whose job it is to be living dress forms, represent the shape variations of the human body, their proportions all slightly different. And this is important! A fit model isn't always a 'house model' – like Clea, some brands bring in several differently shaped women to test the tolerance of the size being fitted.

However, fit models are inextricable from the practice of targeted sizing. As Christina Cato commented at Fasanella's site Fashion-Incubator:

I’ve worked with fit models at a very well known company. In the time that I worked for them we went through 4 different fit models. We were also working on an identity crisis with understanding our customer. Once it was determined who she was the fit model was replaced with someone that would better fit that ideal. It is not a general ideal or an average. It is specific to the woman that buys this line of clothing. Through constant customer feedback the fit is refined and if needed the fit model is changed.

The clothes certainly don’t fit everyone (I couldn’t wear them), but the customers that can wear them are extremely loyal. The fit is the “signature” of the industry. I think it’s very clever to keep that a secret and to keep it unique. It ensures that the loyal customers remain loyal.

Lorna Jane, however, has the same image problem as its fellow 'fashion sportswear' label Lululemon. In claiming to champion health and fitness, yet targeting a particularly small, thin customer, Lorna Jane has been accused of excluding potential customers who also aspire to be healthy, sexy and stylish, but who fall outside its target size range.

So it seems extremely tone-deaf of Lorna Jane to advertise the fit model job – which legitimately has very specific requirements – alongside the receptionist job, which can, and indeed legally must, be offered to applicants of any age, gender, ability, and body shape and size. A Lorna Jane spokesperson told Crikey:

As a fit model is only required in a part time capacity, Lorna Jane felt it appropriate to combine this position with the part time receptionist role which is also currently vacant. … There are a number of positions within our business that combine roles to accommodate the needs and interests of our staff.

For me, this media outrage stems from the same "what about me?" attitudes that I see again and again in media discussions about clothing size. I really hoped that Out of Shape would help dispel them; but they keep being repeated in article after article. And as I noted in 2013 about Abercrombie and Fitch, people really struggle to get their heads around the legitimate marketing practice of targeted sizing in the fashion industry.

There is a widespread belief that consumers 'deserve' to be able to wear whatever brand they want as long as they have the money to buy it; and that if they don't fit into the brand's clothes, then this is the brand's conspiratorial moral judgment. We hear things like, "X brand doesn't care about real women", "X brand doesn't want to tarnish their brand with customers like me" and "X brand promotes unhealthy body image".

Conversely, when a brand decides to offer a broader size range, the media report this as an act of generosity and moral acceptance rather than what it really is: a decision to target a different market. And we'll hear things like "Y brand understands real women", "Y brand is welcoming and inclusive of customers like me" and "Y brand promotes healthy body image".

For me, the main problem with Lorna Jane's two-for-one job ad is that it has allowed the perceptions of exclusion and discrimination associated with its brand to extend to its broader hiring practices. Workplace law specialist Peter Vitale told SmartCompany that it's unlawful in some jurisdictions to discriminate against someone based on their personal appearance. Much depends on the way a job ad is phrased, and “the way [Lorna Jane] have structured the ad hasn’t done them any favours … Because it’s for a receptionist as well, the ad probably sailed a bit close to the wind".

Lorna Jane has made it easy for onlookers to infer – as some media reports have done – that the company only wants to hire employees with very small body sizes, in any role. But the company is perfectly entitled to seek a fit model whose proportions reflect those of its target customer.

More heartache in the underwear department

I had some free time before my first MIFF film on Friday, so I went to Target where they are currently having an underwear sale. I urgently need to buy a plain, everyday pale-coloured bra – white, cream or pale pink – because mine are so old their elasticity is almost gone and they are that sad grey colour. I came away empty-handed, of course.

You can see from this instore display that Target is buying into that oft-cited statistic about the percentage of women who wear ill-fitting bras. I tracked down the journal article they cite; I can't read it without an institutional subscription (paywalled academic publishing is a GODDAMNED RACKET) but it charmingly says in the abstract: "women were found to have a poor ability to independently choose a well-fitted bra, which was not improved by trying on several bras or using bra-sizing measurements."

Women's ignorance is the key message conveyed by this "wrong bra size" statistic when it's cited in the popular media. We are portrayed as idiots who blithely squish or flop our boobs into ill-fitting bras, and who need the assistance of 'expert' bra fitters and extensive how-to literature.

Here is Target's 'checklist' for well-fitting bras:

1 The band sits horizontally around the body.
2 The centre front panel sits flat against the chest.
3 The cups are smooth and wrinkle-free.
4 The breasts are fully contained within the cups – no bulging or spilling out of the top or sides.
5 The underwires surround the breasts without digging into the breast.
6 The straps are secure but not tight – the main support comes from the body of the bra, not the straps.

Women are not idiots. We know all this stuff. We know it because we are constantly reading a bazillion media articles telling us we're doing it wrong.

Here's an alternative view: what if women just want to come home with a new bra? Like other heartache-causing garments including swimsuits and jeans, bras are something women go on missions to buy, knowing it will be no fun but suffering through it because they need the garment and don't want to go home empty-handed.

What if women get so fed up with the poor selection available that they pick the best of a bad lot and learn to live with it?

I really want to hammer home that so many of the problems we face with clothing size and fit are retail issues. For instance, negative experiences with customer service (and my survey unearthed some heartbreaking stories) deter us from seeking 'help with sizes', and poor stock replenishment means we can never access a complete size range in the one store.

So many times I'm forced to settle for a bra I don't really like because they don't have a suitable size in the one I do like. On Saturday I went to Big Dubs, where I tried on various styles of bra in four different sizes. The store didn't have my preferred size in any of the styles I liked, and none of the ugly bras I tried on fitted me either.

I turned myself over to the 'expert' advice in Target's 'bra book', and measured myself according to the instructions. The size chart tells me I should be wearing a size 22B. That is interesting, since Target does not make such a size and nor does anyone else. I am not the only one to call bullshit on Target's bra sizing.

Target recommends solving fit problems by trying larger or smaller cup or band sizes, or trying on a style of bra you wouldn't have picked yourself because it's frickin' ugly. For instance, if underwires are jabbing you, they recommend "a minimiser style as they are designed for a wider breast shape." Too bad if you don't have big boobs that you want to minimise, or if you like to wear low-cut tops.

Target also advocates 'swing sizes' – rather than a 12C, try a 14B or a 10D. Good luck trying to find those in the store in the style and colour you want. But swing sizing only works if you stay within the conventional 10A-16D. If a 16C doesn't fit, you can't try an 18B because there is no such size.

Indeed, it is very hard to find bras with small cup sizes in relation to the back size. I'd be interested to see the percentage of women who have this body shape because I imagine it's quite low – too low for brands to be bothered trying to market to it.

There is, however, a market for fashionable lingerie for small-bodied women who have comparatively large breasts for their size. Culture is beginning to normalise (rather than fetishise) this body shape, although large-breasted women get slut-shamed and female politicians including Julia Gillard and Angela Merkel have been criticised for showing cleavage.

Yet there isn't a complementary bra market for large-bodied women who have comparatively small breasts for their size. They get the obesity stigma of plus-size, yet they lack the bountiful 'curves' that plus-size women often use to combat obesity stigma by associating themselves with retro-styled pinup glamour.

Judging from Target's plus-size range, fat chicks must clamour for either nanna-beige minimisers or 'sexy' bras in bold prints and bright colours, doused in cheap-looking machine lace. Target did not stock any plain, pale-coloured bras in sizes outside 10A-16D. They were black, red, purple and leopard-print vampish styles with lots of lace and satin.

My search for a plain, pale-coloured bra that doesn't make me look like a trussed ham continues.

The pop culture of men's underwear

For centuries, men wore knee-length flannel, linen or wool drawers with drawstring waists. Long flannel one-piece affairs with button-up flies and rear flaps, known as union suits or combinations, were first patented in 1868 and marketed to men, women and children alike; they evolved from women's reform dress.


Men's underwear gets its superheroic connotations from the heroism of sports. Two-piece long johns are likely named after boxer John L Sullivan, the Irish-American heavyweight champion from 1881-92. Sullivan competed in long white leggings, as was customary in his sport at the time.

By 1925, boxers were wearing shorts held up by sashes or leather belts; but boxing equipment impresario Jacob Golomb, whose New York company Everlast had begun in 1910 as a maker of durable swimwear, had the bright idea of making the shorts elastic-waisted instead.

The design became popular as underpants, especially after WWII, where they had been standard issue underwear. Quite apart from the loose, airy sensation they offer – "there's nothing like running upstairs in silk boxers!" my friend Keith once swore – perhaps boxer shorts' original appeal lay in the possibility of feeling tough and strong like a pugilist or a soldier, but keeping this toughness hidden under one's clothes like Clark Kent, who made his DC Comics debut in 1938.


An image from Syd Miller's original Chesty Bond cartoon strip.

Australia's very own comic-strip superhero was Chesty Bond, who first pulled on his iconic singlet in 1940 to battle Hitler, Hirohito, enemy submarines, planes and spies. By 1942 he was appearing in Sydney's Sun five days a week. Cartoonist Syd Miller later told the Sydney Morning Herald that he'd envisioned Chesty as "an Australian strong man in deed and made super by or when he was wearing his Bonds singlet."

Chesty's famous lantern jaw was modelled on former NSW premier Jack Lang. Rugby league player and pro wrestler Max Whitehead modelled as Chesty from 1951, although he had to wear a prosthetic chin as nobody – with the possible exception of TV's Bondi Vet, Dr Chris Brown – looks like Chesty in real life.


Chris Brown: Chesty Bondi?

Superman also battled WWII-era villains in his trademark red briefs. Comic-book superheroes' outfits were modelled on the costumes of circus strongmen and acrobats; Jules Léotard, the French aerialist who first wowed London crowds in 1861, famously wore knitted tights to show off his athletic body and avoid getting tangled in trapezes. The contrasting-coloured trunks worn over the tights offered a degree of modesty as well as crotch support.


Hubba hubba: Jules Léotard.

Y-front briefs were innovated by Arthur Kneibler, who worked in sales and marketing for Michigan-based Cooper's Underwear. In 1934, when sleeveless, short-legged union suits already resembled swimwear, Kneibler received a postcard from the French Riviera depicting a very brief, topless bathing costume.

His version: snug-fitting underpants with no legs at all, and an overlapping front fly offering so much crotch support it resembled athletes' jockstraps‚ which themselves had been patented in 1874 for 'bicycle jockeys'. Hence Cooper's new brand name: Jockey.

'Tighty-whities' were so popular in the mid-20th century that they still hold that era's associations with clean-cut conservatism and hidden sexual perversity. A young Tom Cruise in Risky Business created an iconic image when he danced in his shirt, socks and underpants to Bob Seger's 'Old Time Rock'n'Roll'. As in many 1980s teen sex comedies, Cruise's undies signal dorky sexual inexperience.



Kevin Bacon wears them in the film National Lampoon's Animal House, set in 1962, as he's spanked with a paddle during a hazing ritual for an uptight college fraternity. "Thank you sir, may I have another?" he squawks absurdly between each stroke. Playing a conservative 1980s Los Angeles mayor in Rock of Ages, Bryan Cranston also gets paddled in his undies.



Cranston had already donned tighty-whities in a much-circulated publicity image from TV series Breaking Bad, in which he plays a mild-mannered chemistry teacher-turned-increasingly ruthless drug dealer. It's appropriate that 'breaking bad' means letting loose and challenging conventions, because more recently, pop culture depicts Y-fronts as undies for feckless slobs. Russell Brand wore them in Arthur, as did Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights; Jack Black has made them a signature garment.

However, pop culture still thinks of skimpy briefs as 'European', even more so now that boxer briefs have become a popular choice for men. Bikini briefs are associated with sleazebags and strutting Casanovas, especially in bright colours and animal prints. The Wedding Singer's oily villain Glen Guglia wears a leopard-print pair; Kazakh caricature Borat cheerfully dons a lime-green mankini.


Niiiiiice.

Berlei's dodgy survey boss

Professor Henry Chapman in 1928. 

Berlei might have employed some rad ladies, but the man in charge of the sizing survey was Professor Henry Chapman, of the University of Sydney's Medical School. The university's involvement – for which it was paid in £10,000 worth of Berlei shares – lent the enterprise a ring of reassuring medical authority.

Tall, imposing and with a forceful, charismatic manner, at the age of 47 the British-born Professor Chapman had already enjoyed a glittering academic career at the universities of Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, distinguishing himself in physiology, pathology and pharmacology.

Anthropometry wasn't really his bag… but more pertinently, he relished public attention and had an excellent reputation for working with industry. Chapman would have been a model scholar in today's corporatised, publicity-obsessed universities.

In the earliest of his many consulting roles, in 1908 Chapman testified before a Western Australian Royal Commission on the use of the preservative sulphur dioxide in meat processing. Thanks to his knowledge of yeast, in 1916 he helped found Sydney Technical College's first school of baking technology.

When he chaired a 1919-20 inquiry into lung diseases in the Broken Hill mines that recommended compensation for miners affected by phthisis and pneumoconiosis, Chapman also managed the impressive feat of being respected by both mining companies and union leaders.

For the Berlei sizing survey, he recruited his anatomy colleague, Dr Stewart Arthur Smith, plus two undergraduate science students, Mr R Tannahill and (the aforementioned rad lady) Della Lytton Pratt, as research assistants. While Chapman and Smith supervised, the students were in charge of collecting, classifying and correlating data from 23 different body measurements per participant, using specially designed calipers and rulers.

The Berlei survey was the high point of Chapman's career. In 1928 he was appointed as the university's Director of Cancer Research. Then, as now, cancer research was a prestigious gig, and Chapman's lack of experience in the field bitterly divided his colleagues. A 1930 series of media exposés painted him as a publicity-seeker with dubious research methods.

It seems his work took a toll on his family life. In 1916 Chapman separated from his wife Julie (with whom he had a son and two daughters), and maintained a glamorous bachelor lifestyle at the University Club in Sydney. He also kept apartments in the city and Bondi, and by the time of his cancer research appointment, he was living way beyond his means.

In May 1934, Chapman was caught embezzling cancer research funds and committed suicide by taking a cocktail of poisons. His estate was divvied up among his creditors. Unfortunately, today he's best remembered for this final disgrace, rather than his contributions to public health.

The rad ladies of Berlei: part 3

Man, when I started this post I was only going to tell you about two rad ladies, but it seems that Arthur and Fred Burley employed lots of women in leadership roles that let them, if you will pardon another one of my trademark corny puns, shape Australian public life.


Clare Stevenson, by Nora Heysen, 1943.

Clare Stevenson was born in Wangaratta, Victoria and raised in Essendon. She studied science at the University of Melbourne but graduated in education in 1925, and when WWII broke out she was a senior executive at Berlei in charge of corporate training and product development, travelling between London and Sydney and around Australia.

"The interest in national fitness here amongst the older women will … help them keep the natural good posture and good looks of Australian youth till much later in life," Stevenson told the Perth Daily News in 1940, when she was visiting the city to deliver a very interesting-sounding lecture, 'The Care of the Bustline'.

Due to her management and training experience (and also, apparently, because she wasn't a "socialite"), Stevenson was appointed the Director of the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) in 1940, rising to the rank of Group Officer (the equivalent to Group Captain in the regular air force, or to a captain in the Royal Navy or general in the British Army) in 1942.

The WAAAF was the first and the largest uniformed women's military service in Australia during WWII. By 1944 it had more than 18,000 members and made up roughly a third of the RAAF's ground force. A wonderful Sydney Morning Herald headline in 1941 marvelled, "Director of WAAAFs approves lipstick. Smokes, too."

"Women look more attractive with lipstick, even in uniform," she said, accepting the reporter's offer of a cigarette. "Lacquered nails? It's largely a matter of taste." Seriously, though, she spent the war fighting for equal pay and respect for her enlistees, and against the sentiment from government authorities that women's best contribution to the war effort was to maintain the home.

After the war, Stevenson returned to her previous job at Berlei. She retired in 1960. Never having married, she died in 1988, aged 85.

Desolie Richardson (who became Lady Desolie Hurley on her marriage to Sir John Garling Hurley in 1976) was Berlei's Chief Executive Designer from 1954 until her retirement in 1970. (Here's a photo of her in 1969.) During the 1950s she successfully licensed one of Berlei's flagship designs, the Sarong Girdle, from its American designer Constance Fridolph. (The correspondence between Richardson and Fridolph, thrashing out the details of this deal and sending sample garments back and forth, is now part of the Berlei Collection in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.)



The Sarong was advertised in the Australian Women's Weekly until the early 1980s. It featured two overlapping diagonal elastic panels in the front, which purportedly allowed more 'control' with greater freedom of movement. Early ads showed women dancing, walking a dog and playing golf in the garment. Another selling point was that it apparently didn't ride up.

As a side note, when I see historical ads posted online, in blogs or on Pinterest and Tumblr, I often see people taking the imagery quite literally. As I write in the book, advertising is an archive of desire: it says much more about how people wanted to live than how they actually lived. This is valuable, because it's a way of capturing ephemeral social attitudes.

You can tell what it might actually have been like to wear historical underwear by paying attention to what the ads say their products won't do, or that their competitors do badly. For instance, if an ad says, "Our corset bones are unbreakable!" you conclude that corset bones often used to break.

Richardson also designed the luxurious Mink Bra. As its name suggests, it was a strapless long-line bra made out of fur, which retailed for 50 guineas in 1962 (around $650 in today's money). Check out a photo of this hilarious novelty garment here.

"Unlike ordinary fashion designing," Richardson told the Australian Women's Weekly in 1961, "foundations have to be essentially practical and exact. The job's rather like accountancy and engineering with a dash of fashion thrown in."

The rad ladies of Berlei: part 2

It was Fred Burley's idea to undertake a sizing survey, in partnership with the University of Sydney Medical School, which dovetailed perfectly with Berlei's pre-existing principles of scientifically precise fit and public showmanship. Public tents were set up on Bondi Beach over the summer of 1926-27, as well as at factories, seaside resorts and Turkish baths around Australia. Berlei's surveyors measured 6000 female volunteers aged between 15 and 65.


The Berlei Figure Type Indicator, invented by Della Lytton Pratt

Della Lytton Pratt was one of two undergraduate USyd science students recruited as research assistants. The students were in charge of collecting, classifying and correlating data from 23 different body measurements per participant, using specially designed calipers and rulers.

The data revealed a strong relationship between hip and waist measurements. Working from this, in 1928 Pratt developed a diagram that became known as the Berlei Figure Type Indicator. This was a cardboard (and, later, plastic) chart designed for corsetières to help fit their customers. It featured a moveable disc printed with bust measurements, and a moveable pointer printed with waist measurements. The hip sizes were printed around the edge of the opening in the base.

So, for instance, if your bust was 35 inches, waist was 28 inches and hips 37 inches (this is the example given in the patent description – I wonder if these were actually Della Pratt's own vital statistics), you'd spin the disc until the '35' printed on it aligned with the '37' printed around the edge. Then you'd slide the pointer so that the little notch on the end aligned with the same spot. And you'd look through the little circular holes on the pointer (in later designs, the whole pointer was see-through) designating waist measurements, and whatever colour peeped through at '28' was the figure type Berlei reckoned you had.



Here are the five colour-coded figure types, as displayed on a 1930s-era Indicator. I think I am Type Ab (Abdomen). Note that these types are all framed as things that are 'wrong' with a woman's body, that the corset can then step in and 'fix'.

Della Lytton Pratt is listed as the owner of the patents for this device in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Great Britain, Canada and the US. Because Della was only 20 and so still a minor at the time, her dad, Major William Pratt of the Royal Australian Engineers, had to sign the deed of 'indenture' that transferred the rights to Della's invention to Berlei.

For her idea – from which Berlei went on to profit handsomely, and which figured prominently in the company's marketing – Della was paid five shillings. It's hard to figure out precisely how much that would be today. There are many ways of calculating historical value – the value of a commodity; of income or wealth; or the cost of a project. Many calculators work off the main currency unit at the time; the only specifically Australian historical value calculator I can find seems to work only in dollars.

This gets tricky if your sources mention shillings, half-crowns and guineas. There were 12 pence to a shilling and 12 shillings to a pound. When Australia switched over to decimal currency in 1966, the conversion was two dollars to a pound, and ten shillings to a dollar.

The Australian pound was introduced in 1910 and was roughly the same value as the UK pound sterling until 1931, so I used the UK values to figure out how much Della got paid. Anyway, Della's measly five shillings would have had the same purchasing power as about $18 today.

When I was researching this stuff earlier in the year I became obsessed with finding out what became of Della Pratt after this. For someone who invented something so clever, she seems to have just given it up and gone on to lead a completely ordinary, unexceptional life.

She graduated in 1928, and I tracked her through newspaper family notices as she married a Philip Oakley in 1930, and moved from Sydney to Gilmore, near Tumut in the NSW Riverina, and then – I think! – further west to Finley, near Deniliquin. Their first child, a daughter, was born in 1931. The Major died in 1932. :-( And from there, the trail goes cold and she vanishes into history.

The rad ladies of Berlei: part 1

Australian lingerie label Berlei has its origins in a small made-to-measure Sydney corset company purchased by brothers Fred and Arthur Burley. Arthur came up with the idea of a Frenchified version of their surname to capitalise on the glamour of continental lingerie, and the company was renamed Berlei Limited in 1919 and incorporated in 1920.

The company grew into a transnational empire with branch offices in Melbourne, Brisbane,  Auckland, Adelaide and Perth. The Burleys believed strongly in scientific fitting principles. They ran annual training seminars for corsetry fitters, and between 1923 and 1926 they employed as Berlei's medical director Dr Grace Fairley Boelke. 

I'm not sure if she was fairly bulky, but she was intellectually brilliant; in 1893 she was one of Sydney Medical School's first two female graduates. In her youth she was also a total babe, with dark hair and striking blue eyes. But her early career suffered due to prejudice against female doctors, and anti-German sentiment during WWI, since she had married a German-born fellow medical graduate, Paul Wilhelm Rudolph Boelke.

Boelke was active in women's suffrage organisations, and in public health policy. She believed alcoholism was a social equity and mental health issue, not a moral failing. In 1919 she presented a research paper on the history and effects of alcohol consumption, noting that French soldiers in Gallipoli were "well supplied with the light wines of their country" and suffered less from dysentery than the British. In 1924 she went to the United States to study the effects of its prohibition of alcohol. As the press reported, she came back "a rabid anti-prohibitionist", determined "to save her country from such a curse"!

Yet I was dispirited to discover that in 1928, Boelke was widely reported as saying the White Australia policy didn't go far enough! She insisted, "Australia will be swamped by the East if she doesn't speedily accept a complete European civilisation." At this time she was living in London, and hopefully not mixing with Oswald Mosley, Diana Mitford and the other British fascists.

Her job at Berlei was partly an OH&S role – she was responsible for the health and welfare of Berlei's 600 (mainly female) employees. On her 1924 US tour she also visited eight factories to observe their workplace safety practices.

But she was also a public face for the pseudo-medical claims the Burleys made for their products. Part of her job was to ensure Berlei's corsets were "anatomically correct". I suspect that she just took their money and said, "Oh, yes, very correct."

In a 1924 lecture on "The Philosophy of Clothes", Boelke said: "If women become slaves to fashion, then it should not be at the cost of health. Men are such 'timid animals', however, that they refuse to see the hygienic value of dressing for their comfort, and stick to high, stiff collars, wearing suits that hold dust and germs."

What a fascinating reversal of the widespread belief that in the past, women were the ones suffering in their stiff, formal clothes!

In the company's trade journal, Berlei Review, the brothers urged willowy flappers to "corset for the future" in order to prevent irreparable damage to "muscles and vital organs", or "excessive figure development in the middle years". This use of corsetry to train, rather than constrain, the female body would have been familiar to women whose mothers and grandmothers had encouraged them to cultivate their figures by corseting early and often.

However, by the 1920s corsets were already past their heyday. Since at least the 1890s, a growing cultural shift encouraged people to sculpt their bodies from the inside, via diet and exercise, rather than from outside by squeezing them with corsetry.

It was a tricky time for Berlei, whose 1920s marketing did reflect the prevailing cultural worship of youthful, sporty silhouettes. Its products had dainty, diminutive product names such as "Corselette" corsets and "Berlette" bras. The implied athleticism of its wrap-on "Dance Girdle" was continued in the annual touring musical revues Berlei staged in theatres and department stores to promote its merchandise; the 1924 revue was titled Youth Triumphant.

In charge of these spectacles was another rad lady: Mary Craven. Her father owned an undergarment factory, which Mary managed before joining Unique Corsets – the company that would become Berlei – in 1915, as a designer.

As part of Berlei's corporate strategy, Mary was regularly sent overseas on study tours to learn the most up-to-date industry trends. She then returned to art-direct and compere the annual revues, which were probably much like today's runway shows in the visually spectacular way they presented clothes, but at the time were absolutely novel.



In 1929, when the revue was titled Lady, Be Beautiful, the Advertiser reported excitedly that: "In Brisbane women held up the traffic in their anxiety to get into the theatre to view this unique corset parade." The Sydney Morning Herald described that show as follows:

The stage setting was attractive and beautiful. The four acts Happiness, Hope, Health, and Triumph symbolised youth, the possibilities of attaining a beautiful figure for the maturer woman; corsetry after surgical treatment; and the importance of correct foundation garments to successful dressing. Each act was supported by a ballet and orchestra. Miss Mary Craven spoke briefly on the features of each model as it was shown.

Interviewed by the Brisbane Courier in 1925, Craven said, "Only the woman who has a perfect digestion, never eats a scrap more food than she actually requires, and takes any amount of exercise can afford to discard corsets, and their absence mars the effect of even the best cut and most garçon-like gown. There was a period, after the war, when there was a craze for no corsets, but the well-dressed woman of to-day realises that they are a necessity."