LEANNE DELAP
From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Saturday, Apr. 14, 2007 12:00AM EDT Last updated on Friday, Mar. 13, 2009 9:29PM EDT
I didn't miss the waist at all.
It has been almost 10 years since the dropped-waist cycle began.
This is going to sound dreadfully know-it-all, but I'd date the plunge to Alexander McQueen's bumster pants (offering, er, plumbers a lot of crack), part of his bloodied runway Highland Fling graduate collection from London's Central Saint Martins fashion college.
Long after Britney Spears and her ilk stopped brandishing their bare midriffs, things continued to be low-slung. Jeans sat on hips, beltless. If we did wear belts, they, too, were worn like gunslinger's gear.
The most forward designers have been trying to bring the waist back for many seasons. No one has been listening. It is just now that we are starting to heed the siren call of the hourglass.
Belts are all the rage again. And they are getting so big they are practically corsets. Take this look by Italian design house Lorenzo Riva. The wasp-waist is the point.
Just looking at this belt gives me a bad waist day. I can't bear anything cinched at my centre any more; it's akin to going back to Blahniks after flip-flops. Even though I'm a tall girl, I always feel short-waisted when I'm forced to put fabric anywhere near my last rib and the top of my hip bone. Short of having said ribs removed, this is a hopeless condition.
Sure, I'd sit up straight in a belt that big (and, if you must know, I dream about having a personal assistant with cattle prod standing behind my chair at the ready to zap me every time I start to slouch forward).
But I could happily live my life without the little red marks that come with pants, or shorts in this case, or belts that sit tightly around your waist.
Brave Belts, which are handmade in Canada, has a wide range of clever buckles (http://www.braveleather.com). The two-buckled version shown here is just $90 -- a fantastic bargain compared with the flight to Milan you'd have to take to track down the original (nope, you can't find this in Canada).
Scarlett O'Hara can keep her 18-inch waist, and I'm keeping all my ribs. I just need to place an ad for someone who wants to stand around and cattle prod me all day. It doesn't pay well, but the winning candidate gets to laugh at me a lot.
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