SKIRTS & CLASS DISTINCTION

Hokitika Guardian, 8 February 1930, Page 3

SKIRTS & CLASS DISTINCTION

NEW YORK, Dec, 20. A debate on short skirts versus long skirts, which has been raging in the women’s club of the United States for many weeks, lias received a new and interesting impetus from a pamphlet published by no less sedate an authority than the Methodist Federation for Social Service.

The pamphlet favours abbreviated costume# on two grounds. One is that the average female brain worker in the United States receives not more than £4OO a year and the average industrial worker £3OO. In view of these limited incomes the demand that women should scrap all their last year’s clothes is condemned as an imposition. But the new fashions, the pamphlet says, are open to the more serious objection in a democratic country that they attempt to set up class distinctions, a great Parisian advocate of the longer skirts having recoin mended two distinct fashions—one for the elegante who possesses a car and can allow herself all the fancies and even exaggerations of the style of the moment, and the other practical, ordinary fashions for the general public. The advocates of the short skirt indignantly reply to this that the modern United States cannot tolerate class distinctions in style, and .that never will it consent to have one clothes’ uniform for women workers and another for women of wealth.