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Beauty and comfort make a dress perfect

<span>Photograph: Universal History Archive/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Universal History Archive/Getty Images

Your article (The new taboo: how ‘flattering’ became fashion’s ultimate F-Word, 12 August) makes me wonder if the time has come to reintroduce the ideas of the Rational Dress Society, founded in 1881 in protest at “any fashion in dress that either deforms the figure, impedes the movement of the body or in any way tends to injure the health”. It defines “perfect” dress as a combination of grace and beauty with comfort and convenience. Sounds rational to me.
Suzy Powling
Leiston, Suffolk

• Sadly the need to justify yourself in public is nothing new (Rape survivors say they are being stigmatised for not wearing masks, 10 August). From 1915 workers in munitions factories could wear a lapel badge saying “On War Service” and thus hopefully avoid being given a white feather in the street.
George Kelsall
Littleborough, Lancashire

• The newsagent was neither a mind-reader nor a clairvoyant (Letters, 11 August). Anyone who goes on holiday to Clitheroe can only be a Guardian reader.
Fred Ford
Salford

• Back in the early 1970s a friend introduced me to a young woman with the words: “You two will get on, you both read the Guardian.” This year we will have been married 46 years and the Guardian still arrives on our doorstep each mourning. Many thanks.
Nick Cervantes-Watson
Sarratt, Hertfordshire

• Reading Marina Hyde’s brilliant article on Farage and others (11 August), I am reminded of a line by the great Roman poet Ovid: “Politicians are not born, they are excreted.”
David Halley
Hampton Hill, London