Ceci est le cache Google de http://snelting.domainepublic.net/texts/pressure.txt. Il s'agit d'un instantané de la page telle qu'elle était affichée le 20 juil. 2012 17:35:58 GMT. La page actuelle peut avoir changé depuis cette date. En savoir plus Version en texte seul S C E N E S O F P R E S S U R E A N D R E L I E F Tight Lacers ------------------------ “I am in charge of figures”, she explained, “I am in charge of the shop-girls working at a rather large establishment in London.” She had been employed there since 1890, and in a journal she kept names and measurements of more than a hundred girls. “Would you like to copy the figures from my note-book?” she offered. The woman seemed desirous, almost overly, to share her findings. She had observed that to reduce one girl of 24 inches to the standard of 19 inches, sometimes four times more pressure was needed than necessary for another girl of the same girth. “Out of every hundred, I found only three girls that could not lace at all; six could with difficulty; eight eventually gave up; ten endured the bondage; seventy really enjoyed it, and three laced excessively.” At admission, girls had an average waist of 22 inch. In six months, she calculated, only eight girls had gone down less than 2 inches. Seventy five of them had now laced to a waist of 19-inch, eleven to 18-inch, another eleven to 17-inch, and two to 16 1/2-inch. Out of every hundred, she relentlessly discharged ten girls, because they did not manage to tighten their waists to the standards of the shop. Universal Beauty ------------------------ His scientific work brought him to Africa, Hong Kong, India, The Azores, Ecuador and Chile. He had gained an international reputation for researching women’s hip-to-waist-ratios, but every time his assistant took out the tape measure, finding their narrowest point, usually just above the belly button, and than the widest part, at the hip bone, he did not know where to look. The work back home had been demanding too. With his students he had spent weeks studying large stacks of magazines, trying to determine the proportions of centrefolds, photo models and movie stars from the printed paper. Of course he was mildly amused when they found that Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy, Naomi Campbell and Barbie all shared the same 0.7 hip-to-waist-ratio. But more important to him was the relation between health and beauty that he was now able to prove. “Men around the globe do know what to look for in a woman.” It was a reassuring thought for an evolutionary psychologist. Objects and Curves ------------------------ “Paths represent the geometry of the outline of an object.” “Paths represent the geometry of the outline of an object.” “Paths represent the geometry of the outline of an object.” He read the sentence over and over again but could not grasp what exactly bothered him. The document itself was clear and crisp as ever, and the standard it represented could still change the future of the World Wide Web. They had developed a lightweight, scalable vector format, a language for describing two-dimensional graphics. It opened up the kind of applications he had been dreaming of, since the early nineties, and he sometimes felt frustrated that their work wasn’t embraced with more enthusiasm. But he had also been around long enough to know that the quality of the standard was not necessarily linked to the speed of its implementation. “Paths represent the outline of a shape which can be filled, stroked, used as a clipping path, or any combination of the three.” His pencil drifted over the paper. It all came down to objects in the end. It was as if they had betrayed the line. Madame C ------------------------ Today she started with C. The vinyl letters in different sizes and colors she sold in her shop, found their way to shoarma tents, garages and snack bars throughout the city. She refused to work on command so therefore she needed to take care that she had enough figures and characters in stock. To amuse herself she begun each new alphabet at a random place, but when she placed her knife routinely on the vinyl, to begin the first curve, she hesitated for a moment. Why had she started with the first letter of her name today? It made Madame C feel uneasy. Did she recognize herself in the forms she cut out of plastic? Did she feel she left a mark on the urban landscape? Did she feel the author of her alphabet? The young man with his questions had passed by again this morning and she had replied that her late father had designed the molds, and not her. It was an evasive answer, but the idea that the letters belonged to her personally, was too uncomfortable to deal with. She took her knife and restarted the curvature of the C with a bit more force than was necessary. The result was awkward, but after all, this was how she made a living. Design to reform ------------------------ The suffragettes found in this divorced business woman an unlikely ally. As one of the first self-acclaimed designers of fashion, she reacted against the kinds of artificially exaggerated curves that were the result of wearing corsets. She promoted a slimmer, less restricted silhouette. Times were changing, she knew, and because a more natural, almost uncorseted effect was now desired, she managed to make her fortune selling flexible brassières. A successful designer needs to study her clients from the inside out, she felt; clothes are a reflection of the person and if one wishes to reform, than where else to start than with their mode of dress? Her positivist approach appealed to British and American women alike, and so when she was called to New York for business, she booked a first-class passage on the ocean liner RMS Titanic. When the ship struck an iceberg she was helped into the first lifeboat, large enough to hold forty people, but lowered with only twelve. Looking back at the fast sinking ship, she exclaimed: “And there is your beautiful nightdress, gone!” Reconstructing the norm ------------------------ He studied a great number of antique manuscripts closely, soon realising that not every single one followed a code. Although he was convinced that people have always found planes of definite and intentional measurements more pleasant than those of accidental proportions, even in mediaeval times, artless books were made. The typographer put those manuscripts aside, and continued measuring the ones that were obviously produced with care. He spent a year in numerous libraries, meticulously recording folio sizes, type areas and page margins, until he was confident that the time had come to announce his Golden Canon of book page construction. “How can you be so sure”, I asked, unaware of the studies he had just completed. ““How can you be so sure”, that your system produces more harmonious pages than mine?” He stared at his hands for a moment, and said: “As a rule, impeccable taste springs only partly from feeling”. Then he looked up at me. “But feelings remain rather unproductive, unless they can inspire a secure judgement”. Osmosis ------------------------ Timing could not have been better for putting this type of bra on the market. The French lingerie company looked for an innovative product, and she had been thinking about bodies and armour long enough to have a good sense of what they might have in mind. Last year she predicted a focus on protection and security, but this year her forecast was less bleak. A desire for transparency, for networking and collaboration. A move away from binary oppositions, towards a more nuanced take on life. No exclusion, but inclusion. The result of their collaboration was a revolutionary product. They had patented a high-tech material based on silicones that she felt was particularly interesting. It was strong and supple at the same time, and stretchable in three dimensions. It had taken centuries to do away with whalebones and their plastic replacements, but with this new material they could for the first time in history leave out the underwires without compromising support or structure. 60’s feminists would have been proud of her. Instead of tossing bra’s in the bin, she had revolutionized lingerie itself. The advertisement, she admitted, was slightly over the top: “The material nestles around your breasts as if it were a second skin, naturally giving form to your body and covering it with a shield of charm” But she could not help but feel excited, now women finally could have it all. S O U R C E S Tight Lacers ------------------------ Based on: Shop­Girls, a letter to Modern Society (14 January 1893), as published on the website of contemporary tight lacer Sylphide http://www.victorian­ cafe.de/ Universal Beauty ------------------------ Based on: Singh, D. (1994). Ideal female body shape: Role of body weight and waist­to­hip ratio. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 16, 283­288 and Singh, D. (1993). Adaptive significance of female physical attractiveness: Role of waist­to­hip ratio. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 293­307. Curves and Objects ------------------------ Quotes adapted from: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification, W3C Recommendation http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/ Madame C ------------------------ Until 2000, Madame Crickx sold handcut vinyl letters from her workshop in Schaerbeek, Brussels. Typographer Pierre Huyghebaert conducted several interviews with her and eventually digitized her alphabet into a font named after her. Design to reform ------------------------ Lady Duff Gordon was one of the first to understand the power of fashion branding, and sold her designs under the name Lucile. She survived the Titanic disaster; rumour was that her husband had bribed boats men for not picking up more survivors. Reconstructing the norm ------------------------ Quotes adapted from: Jan Tschichold, The Form of the Book, Essays On the Morality of Good Design, Lund Humphries, 1991 Osmosis ------------------------ Dutch trend forecaster Li Edelkoort worked with the French lingerie company Dim to develop Osmose, a bra without underwires. Launched on the Belgian market in 2005. http://dimosmose.be