PARIS IN THE LOOKINGGLASS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 57, 4 September 1926, Page 17

PARIS IN THE LOOKINGGLASS

FASHIONS AND FANCIES,

(Written for "The Post1" by "Germaine.")

PABIS, 7th July.

Shunning the insinuating foie-gras, and nibbling thy toast, the l Jarisienno is keenly perusing the cult for a slim outline, and sternly refuses pastry and cocktails. Tasting, temporary or periodical, is the rule, and the temptations of the table must be carefully avoided. There is a doctor in Paris who has written convincingly on the evils of fat, and is now the refuge of the obese, with his consulting room daily filled with clients who are fighting the flesh. One of them is a charming actress who has lost 201b of superfluous weight in a course of treatment, and has recovered health and youth at the same time. "I went without food for five days to begin with," she stated to a friend, and throughout her cure she kept her morning for the daily visit to the doctor. Another of his clients is a handsome portly duchess with not too much time to devote to herself, but she, too, has been sent successfully on the road to health, and is of more normai weight. Financiers, statesmen, and others are waging war against fat, which they regard as the enemy of youth and age. Dancing is a craze with the Parisienne elegante who wants to get thin. She daneqs from 4.30 to 7 in the afternoon, hastens home to change her dress, dines sparingly, and then starts off again to the play or the opera, after which she aontinues tc dance at one of the numerous dancing halls of the city, at Montmarto and elsewhere —starting at 11.30 and going on till 2 or 3 in the morning. Thinness, especially where the dressmaking world is concerned, is a fetish. The new dresses consist of a wisp of material —a few inches wide—with a slit up the side in order to give free movement in dancing, or with a panel let into the skirt to give walking width. As little as possible is worn underneath, and the new woman looks so slim, bo attentuated as to be almost skinny.