Sale Addicts On The Scent Of Bargains

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30958, 14 January 1966, Page 2

Sale Addicts On The Scent Of Bargains

Around London With Ann Donnelly

Neither foot-deep snow nor fog, frost nor rain deter a Briton when she — or, increasingly, he —has picked up the scent of a bargain. Long queues form in the morning for the opening of sales at big London stores whatever the weather.

Some stores report the biggest crowds for some years. The rush is not always genteel.

Spectacular fashion bargains ranged from 66 guinea suits for £l2, 70 guinea coats and matching skirts for £35 and crocodile bags—in an Old Bond street shop—marked down by £26 ss. You can have a cheap hairdo: a cut and perm for three guineas instead of the usual six guineas.

A High Holborn department store offered sets of non-stick pots and pans for £5, reduced from £B—“frustrated Rhodesian export.” Sale addicts, according to one psychiatrist, are usually women who are bored, insecure or emotionally unhappy with their husbands. But this year's sale crowds hardly bear that out.

Afore and more men have have been seen bargain hunting in the sweater bins and on the suit racks—a result of increasing male fashion consciousness.

One® they have spotted their bargain, men buy more quickly, confidently and politely than women. They were buying half-price silk ties by the half-dozen in a Regent street store. A young man stripped to his singlet to try on a sweater at the counter.

Until the end of January, bold sale notices will emblazon West End shop windows, except in Carnaby street. It is the mod youth's Saville row where pants are small, tight and often purple.

“Look at all our customers. We don’t need sales here,” said an assistant in Lord John’s at the top of the street.

“There may be a few bargains in the other shops for you. Otherwise it’s just tat,” he said.

Just one Carnaby street shop, Gear, is stooping to a sale. Its decor is pale pink and it currently displays a brass bedstead in the window. Posters “to help eradicate the shopper’s built-in suspicion of sales” were displayed in many shops this year. They stated that the store complied with Retail Trading Standards Association rules. This meant mainly that the prices shown were genuine and that sub-standard goods were marked as such. * * In Back Seat

TN British parliamentary circles, it is apparently taboo for a Cabinet minister to discuss departmental problems with a spouse. Otherwise the charge against Mrs Barbara Castle, the new Minister of Transport, would be not that she is a non-driver. but that she might be guided by a back-seat dricer, her husband. Mr Ted Castle never managed to become an M.P. But he loves the House and sits through many all-night debates. It is not only out of solicitude that he goes down to meet his wife. Mr Castle, an executive on the political staff of the “Sun,” contents himself politically with being on the Greater London Council. His special interest is the city’s traffic problems. As vice-chairman of the

council’s highways’ committee, he will meet his wife officially for the first time next month. He will be in a deputation giving detailed suggestions on how to deal with London traffic.

NIRS Castle—Britain’s first woman Minister of Transport—used to drive, but her husband has been the only one to drive the family car for years. He says his wife is a first-class passenger. She does not presume to tell him what to do. She is content to accept the car as a convenience.

Mrs Castle may be the only non-driver in the parliamentary Labour party, but she is not the first Minister of Transport not to drive. Leslie Hore-Belisha, after whom Belisha beacons are named, did not drive either, the “Guardian” pertinently pointed out that Ministers of Aviation do not have to fly. nor Ministers of Housing to build.

The new minister—described as pint-sized and vivacious—will at least have some time to think as she is driven round by greenuniformed Government chauffeurs.

The job is regarded as one of the toughest in the cabinet, and the graveyard of political ambition. The pay is £B5OO a year plus £1250 parliamentary allowance. Mrs Castle did things like arrange aid for Tanzania and Ghana in her old post at Overseas Development. Now she has to think about the British rail deficit of £l3O million, the drink limit law, breath tests, the 70-mile-an-hour motorway speed limit, to say nothing of London’s snarlups. * >;: * Fonteyn’s Genius TAAME Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev wound up last year dancing in five shows with the Australian Ballet Company at the Palais des Sports in Paris. The famous pair had already presented Nureyev’s new version of Petipa’s “Raymonda” with the same com-

pany at the Champs Elysee Theatre a few weeks previously. Their dancing had been hailed for its sublime musicality, but as for “Raymonda”—“it is not a ballet which can inspire passion,” said one critic. London critics were kinder when the ballet had a nineday season here just before Christmas. “It is a big thrill when a whole new classical ballet sunbursts upon you,” said a critic.

“TJAYMONDA” is in the height of the classical Russian romantic tradition. Petipa wrote it just after he had done “Swan Lake” and “The Sleeping Beauty.” It was first put on in Russia in 1898. The music is by Glazounov. Nureyev has done much simplifying because the reason the ballet never became popular was its length and complicated nature. He has not perfected the work yet. But, “with the smallest of twists it could become a lasting popular classic,” wrote a critic.

Fonteyn won limitless admiration in the testing ballerina role. She was a pearly vision, showing every facet of her genius; the musicality

and evergreen delicacy of her movements matched the pantherine figure of her partner, said the critics.

Peggy van Praagh’s Australian Company was highly commended. “They tackled the challenge gallantly, but inevitably lacked polish and finesse,” it was said. The company will take the ballet in their repertoire for Australia. Fonteyn has also been appearing in a revival of Ashton’s “Cinderella.” An exquisite, musical, bewitching perfonnance; such starry dazzle, such perfect judgment of poses—no critic can praise her enough. After performances she may throw a celebrity party at Danny La Rue’s Club. She makes fashion headlines as she comes and goes through London Airport. One time it was an Yves Saint-Laurent Mondrian coat and dress, another time a striped white mink and black leather coat. * * *

(~)NE of those periodical lists of the world’s most glamorous people was put up recently by the London “Evening Standard.” Dame Margot, predictably, was on it. So was Jackie Kennedy, a Beatle (any Beatle), tod steeplechaser, Arkle.