Irrational pet pattern peeves

There is one construction detail that’s an absolute deal-breaker for me when it comes to buying a pattern.

That’s the presence of a pernicious horizontal bust dart. That bold in-yer-face slashed line at the side of the bust, as you see in the picture above. Which I just can’t look at for more than a moment.

It’s just so… clunky!  It breaks up the lines of the figure, which, let’s face it, you want to flow from top to bottom, rather than side to side. It stops the eye. The bust dart is the equivalent of misplaced punctuation in; the middle of a flowing sentence.

I know the female form has to be accommodated somehow, but there’s so many more elegant ways to do it.

Gathering to shape the bust, a feature of even the more basic patterns of the 30s and 40s:

I’ve seen quite a few Mod/1960s patterns which use seams both for graphic interest, and for shaping to get round the bust:

But if you can’t eliminate a bust dart, you can at least hide it, like this 1950s Vogue pattern. See how the bust dart becomes part of the diagonal design?

Trouble is, all this relies on putting some thought into the cut. And that thought can be expensive and time-consuming from a design perspective. It’s generally the high-end or “designer” patterns that put effort in to accommodating the bust in an interesting way, rather than just resorting to a bust dart. In fact, I’d stick my neck out and say that the plain old bust dart is just plain lazy. I grant it’s probably easier to custom fit that a more complicated design. Yes, it’s fairly quick to sew. And I suppose it might be more economical on fabric. But still. I just can’t like it.

Am I slowly sliding into being completely irrational? What about you? What’s your number one pet pattern peeve???