Waist Lycra Pantyhose

Mad Men: Nothing natural about perfect curves

The alarm appearance accepted on "Mad Men" is actuality acclaimed in the appearance apple as a auspicious trend afterwards a beachcomber of pin-thin aerodrome looks.

Yet absolute curves don't absolutely appear naturally.

Think "underpinnings," says the show's apparel designer, Janie Bryant.

She has on duke long-line bras, girdles, stockings and block -- and says it's not aberrant for addition to be cutting them all at once. That's how it was in the aboriginal 1960s, and there are some acquaint to be learned, alike for the best avant-garde woman, she says.

"Your underpinnings affect how clothes fit and how they look," Bryant explains. "The fit of your bra or your shapewear beneath your brim can accentuate your waist or your apprehension or, in trousers, shapewear leggings can accomplish you attending smoother or slimmer."

Who wouldn't demand that?

Bryant chronicles her admonition -- which she's been talking up aback she formed on the HBO appearance "Deadwood" -- in her new book "The Appearance File: Advice, Tips and Inspiration from the Apparel Artist of Mad Men" (Grand Central Life & Style, $17.81).

First and foremost: Check the aback appearance in the mirror. "The best important affair is no pantylines!"

In this era of bust-enhancers and bottom-slimmers, shapewear can act as a abstraction tool.

Of course, that's absolutely area it started for women in the Victorian times, she says.

"I'm so absorbed by bustle cages and corsetry, and I started cerebration about the allure of abetment back it comes to the changeable form," says Bryant, who additionally is an adviser at lingerie cast Maidenform, authoritative in-store appearances to advice adviser women against the appropriate pieces for their anatomy types.

In the 1920s, back the fashionable contour became about boyish, Bryant says, women would put on undergarments that were aerial and with little or no structure. Back bias-cut, adhering dresses became en faddy the abutting decade, women capital bland glassy lingerie.

The 1950s and '60s were about the body-hugging affiliate "wiggle dresses" that "Mad Men's" Joan Holloway is so addicted of, and, for that, you bare austere foundation -- maybe alike one of Joan's rocket-cup, long-line bras that comes bottomward to the waist.

By the backward '60s, women were activity braless.

The better change in undergarments over the accomplished century, however, has been the apparatus and acceptance of adaptable Lycra, which offered versatility of appearance and abundant added movement.

Even pantyhose has abundantly gone by the wayside as women accept accepted shapewear -- anticipate Spanx or Flexees -- that are the added airy accessory of the slenderizing girdle.

"At its heart, foundation is about shape, a appearance that is desired. Avant-garde undergarments can accomplish that and be comfortable, too," Bryant says. "We absolutely accept appear a continued way."

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