The Best-Dressed Nation

Hokitika Guardian, 20 July 1921, Page 3

The Best- Dressed Nation

AN EXPERT OPINION.

(By Sir IVoodam Burbidge, Bt., C. BEE., Managing Dimitor of Harrods.)

LONDON, May 17

| fancy that most people would be inclined ‘to turn to France for the best-dressed women, and, in the matter of men’s wear, to waver Ix-twecn England and the United States. As for” me 1 would agree with neither the one verdict nor the other. I maintain that unquestionably the bestdressed men and women anywhere ace to he found in the Argentine Republic. Those who have never been there imagine that South America is inhabited by human birds of paradise. The f a( -t is that there never was such a land of quiet colours, of blues aim blacks and greys. Even in the pampas (prairies), among the descendants Of tlie original Indian population, one comes upon little that is picturesque. A peon (labourer) on a hacienda (ranch) may give a week’s wages for a Fright handkerchief of silk to knot around his throat on holidays but at other times he wit'll wear any old clothes that come his way. As for the gaucho, the cowboy of the wilds, he will buy at the nearest store a whole role of coarse cloth that wears like iron, and from it his wife will make shorts for him, garments for herself, dresses and suits for their children.

Bu tof course, peons and cowboys are as little representative of Argentina and its taste in dress as a costermonger in his “pearlies” is representative of England’s. The Argentine is now a country where more than half the population dwell in towns, half a dozen of them as big as Eastbourne, the chief city, Buenos Aires, being the size *f Manchester and LiverpooS put together. And this multitude of townsfolk, by origin mainly Spaniards and, Italians, dresses in the fashion of the rest of the civilised world—only better. Save for white duck suits and light coloured pyjamas in which to lounge during the day, their clothes arc like ours or those of France, if superior to both in sylo nnd decorum.

No Argentine woman, for example, would dream of appearing in mixed company clad in a bathing dress, such as one sees in France or the United States, or, for that matter, at Brighton.

The men must ivenr swimming suits with half sleeves and trunks over the knees; and they may not appear in Quitted costumes where there is mixed bathing.

They regard in the same spirit any extravagance of pattern or colour, and here the national custom abets their natural reticence, long spells of full mourning being decreed even for third

cousins 1 Y'ot the women are ns stylish as I they are quiet. Invariably the fash- J ions of Buenos Aires are six months | ahead of Paris. I admit that Ameri- . 'can women dress well; a tailor-made j dress for an American beats a tailormade dress for an Englishwoman. A tailor-made dress for an Argentine wo- ! man beats both. 1 As for the men they too dress better j than the Englishman or the American, j An Argentine cutter who lately visited j ' .London was quite, distressed by the gaucherie of London suits. ; You would never sec an Argentine j ’ man in a check suit. You would never i see him wearing a green tie with blue ' socks. He is neat and ho is lU) t loud; j •he has ceased to be vulgar. It is a j lesson which older nations have yet to , \ learn. j