AMATEUR PAINTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 3, 5 January 1939, Page 14

AMATEUR PAINTERS

To speak of "women in white" does not necessarily involve members of the admirable nursing profession. Summed up, the woman in~ white is she who has fallen for the fashion for snow white clothes and so presents in her dressing, an illusion of ice cool freshness. Now let's start right from the foundation fundamental of this fashionable fad that is the darling of the Paris Couturiers, a■• smart stunt of the Walt Disney Enterprises and a more than real element of the present London season, laden as it is under a blanket of the heaviest snowfall in years. Overseas, as winter came on, the trend became more and more inclined to all things Edwardian or appertaining to the Victorian. Hair has * gone high and stays there in spite of doubtful forebodings as to its success. Evening gowns spring out in crinolines, shoulders are bared. Purple, cerise, and hectic plaids are very much in the picture "but where does the snow white theme come in?" you ask.

Didn't I say that we would begin with the foundations! Well, just think back to the white lawn frilled petticoats and starchy nightgowns that you relegated to the dust-bin many long

years ago. Or perhaps you were not so harsh. They may still be packed away in some forgotten attic trunk or chest-of-drawers. The long stiff knickers you used to wear, the coy chemises that belonged to mother, and, if you are truly lucky, the fearful, whaleboned corsets that were Grandma's, may all be revealed in the light of ;day again. THE FOUNDATIONS FIRST. Because, have you guessed, to make a faithful copy of any Edwardian beauty is not purely a matter of surface adornment. Under those stiff exteriors lay a vast amount of lingerie starched and boned within an inch of the wearer's life. And we must emulate those lines by copying not only the gowns, the shoes, the hair styles, but also the clothes that went beneath. Naturally enough the old fabrics that ironed up "§tiff as a board" are, substituted for s<sft sheer materials of extremely modern manufacture and the agony of whalebones is cast out for ever with the advent of new plastic bones used in conjunction with itwo-way stretch elastic processes to achieve the firm, supported, and ultra- ' feminine look that is so much in de-