Going Undercover : Designers: Linda Mutchnick’s new line of fashion-conscious clothes was created with the gun-toting woman in mind.

Ladies! Upset because that cute little semi-automatic you’ve been packing is causing unsightly bulges? Concerned that your shoulder holster is poking and prodding all the wrong curves and contours?

Have no fear. The pistol-packin’ grandmom is here to take care of your design needs.

“The women I know have a hard enough time getting into their pants without having additional room for a gun,” says Linda Mutchnick, a 49-year-old paralegal who has come out with a line of clothes designed with gun-toting women in mind.

Mutchnick, whose PistolERA line of clothing is based in this Philadelphia suburb, has been packing heat--currently a .380 Beretta--for 10 years, ever since a series of threatening phone calls she received at work made her fear for her safety. She has never had to fire her weapon in self-defense, but she practices twice weekly, is training to be a National Rifle Assn. certified weapons instructor and carries the gun with her at all times.

During her decade of gun ownership, Mutchnick has also discovered one sobering fact: Fashion and gun-toting tend to be mutually exclusive concepts.

“Up until now, most modes of carrying guns have been aimed toward men,” she says, referring to shoulder and hip holsters. “And I don’t need to tell you that a woman’s physique is so much different from a man’s.

“When wearing a holster on a belt, the swell of a woman’s hip causes the barrel of a gun to be pushed out, and the butt pushed in, which is very uncomfortable. With a shoulder holster, you have a similar problem, but now you’re dealing with the breast area.”

Over the years, Mutchnick discovered that ready-to-wear garments were simply not made with gun-carrying women in mind. And the few attempts to deal with the problem seemed inadequate.

“I’ve seen bra holsters,” she says, “and holsters that fit on the belly area down in the pants, where you practically have to disrobe to get the gun. By the time you get to it, you could be dead.”

So Mutchnick decided to take matters into her own hands. A self-described “clothes- and fashion-conscious” person who “knows quality,” she sat down earlier this year and began sketching out the problem areas for gun toters, what she calls “the areas that were being poked, pinched, prodded and jabbed.”

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Concentrating on skirts and slacks, with primary emphasis on the waist area, Mutchnick--who has basic sewing skills--realized that some sort of elasticized rigging would be needed. Elastic allowed for expansion of the problem areas without throwing “the whole garment off whack.”

Her solution was to combine a structured waistband with an elastic one, placing adjustable pieces one-inch apart on each side of the waist. She took the same formula and adapted it to the shoulders on jackets, then came up with a series of specs that would help her determine “how heavy the elastic and how heavy the interfacing material must be to hold the gun without distorting the shape of the dress.”

Mutchnick next took her sketches to a designer, who made patterns for her. She then purchased some muslin and reworked the designs in order to get all the bugs out. By last month, she was ready to roll out her line.

Mutchnick’s fashions are all made-to-order by four seamstresses on her payroll. She is offering skirts, slacks, a vest and two types of jackets, one of which is reversible and can be adapted for either right or left-handed shoulder-holster users. Prices are determined by the type of material used. A basic skirt, made from $6-a-yard cotton or cotton sateen, costs $110. A jacket can cost up to $275. Mutchnick’s more expensive line is made from wool gabardine, wool crepe or Belgian linen, which runs in the $22- to $25-a-yard range. Orders are processed in six to eight weeks.

Mutchnick has sold less than a dozen outfits so far, mostly from word-of-mouth referrals. Clients include a physician, an advertising executive, an attorney, a bookkeeper and a police officer. (The NRA estimates there are 15 million female gun owners, most of whom purchase handguns for personal protection.)

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Mutchnick’s name for her line, PistolERA, is something of a triple-entendre. It is not only the Spanish word for holster or gunfighter , but evokes the Equal Rights Amendment, even though Mutchnick says she “is not an activist, not involved with the ERA.”

More than anything, Mutchnick says, she came up with the name because of the political situation in 1992--the so-called Year of the Woman. “We’re doing so many things these days that were closed to us before,” she says. “I thought with the era of the woman, it would be apropos.”

The creator of the PistolERA line knows that her clothes aren’t for everyone.

“There are some very gun-sensitive cities in this country, and some vocal anti-gun people,” she says. “They’ll hate me for what I’m doing because it’s gun-related. But I’m not trying to alter anyone’s opinion as to whether to carry or not.”