CHANGING FASHIONS IN BEAUTY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 10 December 1927, Page 11

CHANGING FASHIONS IN BEAUTY

E 1 ASH lON in drea* alters with each season. Types of beauty belong to a decade. One has only to study some of the pictures of modern woman of ten years or so ago to realise how great is the change that doe's take place in face fashions. Beauty has emerged in a fresh and distinct type during the last few years—not so new as the shingled, ultra-smart girl of 1927 would like, perhaps, to believe. One of the greatest force* at work is the present-day feeling for character. GIRLS OF OTHER DAYS. Those Clytie-like creations, with their immobile expressions, who wore skirts to their insteps, and widebrimmed hats perched on the top ot an aureole of hair, are the same women to-day, and yet how extraordinarily different. The Gibson girl, with her svelte, waisted figure, unmistakably belong* to her period. Some were more beautiful than others, nearly all wore that same undisturbed, contented, and somewhat vacant expression. The manner of dressing the hair in full waves at the side and above the brow, helpc. to make them all look rather alike insipid and uninteresting. What is responsible for the changes in feminine face fashions and ideals of beauty? Often there is a well-known artist at the back of the movement. He chooses a model, and instinctively women make it their own. It was so with the Burne-Jones and Rosetti beauties. Augustus John has done hi* share in creating the modern type of young woman. Nowadays the film is a factor, writes Clemenoe Kerr in the “Sunday Express.” Almost unknowingly women copy their favourite film beauty so far as their own type permits them (This even affects some of the sterner sex; look how they have adopted “side-boards” since Rudolph Valentino flamed and died out like a meteor). A popular royal personage may have an enormous influence on the appearance of the women of her day. A famous artist who paints aristocratic women, again, creates a type that is copied by many other women. It is a long step from the old Flemish painters, yet their women are often peculiarly akin to our women in their expression of character and temperament. Fashions in faces appear to work in a magic circle, and the modem girl would be surprised to know, perhaps, that she is far more like her ancestresses than she imagines, skipping a generation or two usually, and going further back to those quaint daguerrotypes of seventy years ago. Toke away the funny ruffled headdress, the side curls, and the fichu (why, even the latter is returning), and you will often find the same force of character in the features that one sees in the shingled girl of to-day. The arched eyebrows, the firm mouth, the intelligent eyes, belong to the youth of this era. PLENTY OF CHARACTER. There is the period in between when young women played croquet in frocks made so tightly that it was impossible to sit in them, and who aank into a decline when their love

affairs went agley ■ the Clytie period, when women were looked on as tender flowers to be cherished and cared for. Then it was that women’s faces assumed the characterless expression that held good for so long. To-day, no one can accuse the modern girl — unless it be the “peach” type, whom nothing will alter—of lack of character. The new Eve. as she grows older in the w of the world, may, and very often does, wear a mask. It is, however, a distinctive “Mona Lisa” mask, and one may be sure that there is real force of character hidden behind.