“New Look” Invades The Kindergarten: Party Frocks Longer

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 10, 20 October 1948, Page 3

“New Look” Invades The Kindergarten: Party Frocks Longer

A woman with 58 children, all of them between the ages of two and three, used them as mannequins to introduce to London the New Look in children’s clothing. The woman is Miss Marie Harvey, her ‘children’ are puppets, and she ‘worked’ them at an exhibition called ‘Children’s Fashions in Wool’ organised by the International Wool Secretariat at their Regent Street showrooms. The exhibition was opened by Helen Hayes, eminent American actress. It was the first major exhibition of its kind in London, and the first big show in which Miss Harvey has appeared in Britain since she gnd her large ‘family’ returned recently from a w'orld tour. Puppets were used in the show because of the regulations governing the employment of children under the age of 13. “My children,” said Miss Harvey, “are the children who never grow old. They are the Peter Pans, Boy Blues, Baby Buntings, 80-Peeps and Red Riding Hoods of our nurserv days—come to life so far as a labyrinth of twine and the nimble fingers of my operators can bring them.” Miss Patricia Hill, who organised the exhibition on behalf of the Jnterhational Wool Secretariat, says that children’s clothes in 1948 shoW striking proof of the extent to which the adult New Look has influenced even the kindergarten. “Party dresses for children are worn longer,” says Miss Hill. “Some of them are even calf-length, with even greater emphasis on frills and flounces. “It is particularly noteworthy th'a t the recent developments in the manufacture of lightweight wool fabrics are solving what has always been a problem for mothers of young children.. No longer is it necessary, when the Children are in their best party dresses, for them to wear bulky underwear for warmth. For even in its tains all its warming virtues. No matter how they scamper about, there is no danger of the children catching cold when moving, for example,' from a warm room to the open air.” The exhibition included nine scenes depicting incidents in the social activity of children—in the garden, the nursery, the park, skating, walking and sleeping. The clothes, were contributed to the exhibition by Britain’s leading designers and manufacturers. The exhibition, as have many previously put on by the Secretariat, demonstrated how lightweight wool fabrics, because of their extreme versatility, have come to dominate the children’s fashion field.