A late 1950s or early 1960s Contempé Production, The Fashionable Figure is a short video report from Harper’s Bazaar and special reporter Elaine Lynn on the importance a woman’s figure and posture play in good fashion. The film centers around a luncheon for women (00:58; 04:34) hosted by Harper’s Bazaar, where the “fashionable figure” is discussed and women model new outfits ranging from cocktail dresses and ball gowns to sportswear and travel dress. The film opens with shots of a busy city street, fashionable ladies walking down a city sidewalk (00:41) before arriving at the luncheon. Some of the first outfits modeled at the event are a vibrant silk organza (01:30), a shale-pink silk linen dress (02:17), and a pink swimsuit with a matching robe (03:05). According to the film, posture is the most essential component to having a fashionable figure, and Harper’s Bazaar recommends the Stauffer method of passive exercise. The film runs through several different types of women who suffer from some form of postural sag (03:50): an elderly woman engaging in civic activities (05:10), a professional woman running an office (05:47), a housewife performing domestic chores (06:30), and a woman carrying groceries through a car-filled parking lot (07:06). The film showcases one of the event’s models, who maintains her posture and “fashionable figure” by taking just a few moments each day to “exercise” with her Stauffer home exercise machine (07:58; 12:30). The gyrations help muscle tone and improve postural alignment, which enables women to have excellent posture, so they can wear the latest in fashion. The “latest in fashion” includes various types of dresses with plunging back lines (08:42), and the film concludes with the modeling of these dresses at the luncheon and, to end the film, the model using her Stauffer home machine.
In 1965, the Stauffer machine company was sued by the Federal Trade Commission which found that the “Magic Couch” cannot and will not perform in accordance with these claims, and that it has no value or usefulness in accomplishing the asserted results.
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