WAR ON TROUSERS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 17 November 1927, Page 9

WAR ON TROUSERS

SEEKING A “NEATER LEG.”

Trousers, especially in the style of a bygone generation, are rather funny garments to anyone who regards them dispassionately. Nevertheless (says the Yorkshirt Evening Post) we fancy men will be in no hurry to give them up, as Paris is urging, and return to knee-breeches—-a mode which the success of “plus fours” has doubtless encouraged. Even “plus fours” are not for everyone; and though, with the arrival of short skirts, the overwhelming majority of women (in the way women have of meeting all emergencies) were found to have legs that looked very neat in silk stockings, it is doubtful whether men are so resourceful in such matters.

No doubt there would be some who would welcome knee-breeches—the wearers of “plus fours” and vivid stockings, for instance, and also those youths whose trousers are hauled up high to exhibit to the world a great length of gaudy sock—but most of us are content, for good and sufficient reasons, to continue to hide from the vulgar gaze the beauties of our nether limbs. Knee-breeches would, of course, mean silk stockings for evening wear at least, and it is possible that this would please the increased measure of vanity which seems to have been included in the make-up of some modern young men. But silk stockings, as women have discovered, are not an unmixed blessing. Will the time come when young men, going to dances, will wear two pairs of stockings with kneebreeches—the extra pair for warmth, or to keep the others clean? And may we also see our young bloods running round in dismay, trying to borrow needle and thread? (“Such a nuisance—l’ve laddered a stocking. And only new on to-day, too.”) Kneebreeches may bring all this trouble about. The only point in their favour is that they would enable men to dispense with that now very necessary evil, the suspender.