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Preserve your figure
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The Home November 1940
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In a recent discussion on the forum ‘Girdles and More’, several correspondents mentioned that it was the conventional wisdom of the sixties that a well chosen foundation would prevent your body from ‘going to seed’. Berlei assiduously cultivated this dogma for many years. This advertisement appeared in the Australian magazine The Home in November 1940, and advised that the properly chosen Berlei foundation would protect your body from the ravages of the years.
In it the copywriter waxed positively lyrical:
The long-waisted look of summer, 1940
The hourglass figure has had its hour and gone. This season the bosom is high, defined and separated; the waistline flows from bust to thigh in one smooth, unbroken curve. Let Berlei help you achieve the new "long-waisted" look -- with glamorous controlettes, high-waisted step-ins and wrap-ons, and deep fitting brassieres.
Line is the foundation of glamour and dress success. Line gives colour and fabric and detail their meaning. Cherish your line. Mould it, hold it, preserve it against the unforgiving years. You can, with a Berlei true-to-type foundation, designed especially for your figure.
Take years off your figure with a
Berlei
The Foundation of Beauty
Unkind people might suggest that there were better things for the lady to be worrying about in November 1940.
Preserve your Figure!
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In the lean years during and after WW2 the Fowler's Vacola preserving jar was an icon to the thrifty Australian housewives of the day, who used it to preserve any surplus produce from their gardens, and fruit and vegetables purchased cheaply during the summer glut. The jars came in a wide range of shapes and sizes, to handle different crops. After the produce was loaded the jars were sterilised either by placing them in a large saucepan containing a small amount of water, over a slow fire, or, for the well-to-do, by putting them in a thermostatically controlled steriliser supplied by Fowlers.
This advertisement, which probably appeared in the late forties, tried to tap into this instinct by suggesting that the thrifty housewife could also preserve her figure by wearing a Berlei girdle. The name of the jar does not appear in the advertisement, but it would have been recognised immediately by almost every Australian woman.
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