NO CLOTHES.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1467, 15 June 1912, Page 11

NO CLOTHES.

"No spring clothes." This alarming headline has been suggested by a strike of 10,000 West End tailors and tailoresses, who have chosen tho height of tho spring "rush" as a suitable time for bringing pressure upon their employers, eays a correspondent of "Tho Australasian." Thousands of costumes have been left unfinished in the workrooms, and the leading tailoring houses in Bond Street, Savilo Bow, and Conduit Street are now in the hands of the picke'e. At least half of the strikers are tailoresses. Tho women are taking their share with tho men in picket duty. Skilled tailoresses are demanding tt minimum wekly wage of 30s. The strike fever has not attacked the dressmakers, so London women" are not yot contemplating cancelling all engagements. Nevertheless, the trouble is serious. Much of the best class tailoring work is done in the workers' homos, where the labour of the family can be utilised. When finished the articles are brought by the young girls to Savile Row and the other centres of the trade. There have been several amusing encounters between these messengers and the pickets, particularly when the messengers desired to take back fresh cloth. In more than one oase the packages were torn open, and the material thrown into the street.

The tailoresses' strike is not the only alarming sartorial news of the week. Dr.' Karl Francke, a leading Munich physician, has been investigating the physical phenomenon which ho knows as "X legs," but which English people describo as "knock-knees." • He has found that in infancy some 75 per cent, of members of both sexes suffer from the deformity. But whereas the limbs of the male straighten out, those of the female tend to become more crooked. In tho forty-eighth year of life Dr. Francke estimates that only 8 per cent, of men, but no fewer than 82 per cent. of. women, are knockkneed. He attributes this partly to insufficient exercise, but he tells us that an even more prolific cause of knock-knees is the tight skirt. "Close-fitting and heavy skirts,hamper, the gait,.and force the raised knees inward, so that the shape of their wearers' , limbs must inevitably become contorted." Dr. Francke looks forward to a time when it will be considered a crime to wear a close-fitting skirt. -The dress experts of Paris and London will have'nothing to do with the Munich physician's theory. In any case, they plead that'they are doing their best to provide a remedy by popularising- the pannier skirt. , This has reached tho stage of representation upon 'the stage. Miss Marie Tempest has appeared iu n, daring specimen of the pannier in her new play. The majority of women, however, are waiting.