OSTRICH PLUMES AND FUR SETS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 175, 19 May 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

OSTRICH PLUMES AND FUR SETS.

W(!M.K\ WA» WORKERS IN LONDON" LAST END.

HKVEL IN LUXURIES

UNKNOWN IN ANTI-BELLUM DAYS.

The Ea«t End of London, writes a correspondent, has shared largely in the war prosperity which lias overtaken the working classes, and the big wage? earned are reflected in the enhanced receipts of tradespeople who have found an abnormal demand for finery and articles of attire. One has only to walk down one of the big working class thoroughfares at n week-end to see evidence of how much money is being spent on dress, and it is impossible not to feel that if the wearers bad gone in for more useful and less strictly fashionable clothing, saving the money represented by the difference, they would have done better fo:; themselves and better for the country.

The groat nmb.tion of many working women is to secure a hat with a lancer plume in it, and to tins end they jon lnnw-p!unip clubs, paying a shilling a week until they have fared sufficient to place the coveted article of vanity within their reach. At the present time, however, owing to war work wages, they have no nerd to wait until the shillings have slowly accumulated; out of throe of four weeks' money they can buy the biggest ostrich plume the East Kiicl has to sell, and nothing is more surprising than to notice the number of women who pass you by in the Com-mercial-road, the Mile End-road, and Shoreditch High-strict gay with hate from which one huge feather droops worth from two U i'.iroe guineas. VKliOl'ltS AT STREET STALLS. Tiie wearer of many a fine veiour hat may be met shopping off the streetstalls which are a conspicuous feature of East End life. The millinery shop customers, passing rich on their war earnings, are tempted to buy by tna artful argument t,i the manageress that thev- are otfued for 15s a hat similar to that sold in the West End for 30s. In the big shops of the Kast Phid a leading line seems to bo the lis 9d hat, which is not without merits both as regards material and style. Time was when the JJs lid hat was considered the leading soiling article in these parts. The East End has had an excellent reason in the matter of furs. Standing at the corner of Leman-street, White* chapel, which k not exactly a vantagepoint of fashion, 1 counted in five minutes no fewer than ten young women who were wearing furs for which they would not have oaid less than five guineas the set. The furs worn include.! fox, skunk, wolf, and squirrel. Never was there a tiuio when stocks of all kinds of furs sold so readily. Tailoresses working on war orders have had the monev to spend and they have spent it like their sisters in the north, who are either themselves on munition work or married to engineers in receipt of £0 to £'7 a week. CLASS DISTINCTION" IN BOOTS. Working-class r.cighbourhoods do not poem to lend themselves to the fashionable light-topped boots, but one m every four young women to pass you in Aldgato u the proud possessor of a pair, and the attractively arranged windows of the boot shops make a speciality or three lines, the superlative quality at 21s 6d, the lesser quality at 16s 9d, and the ordinary pair of boots at 12s Pd. According to the respective quality worn so does the East End define its own nice class distinctions.

■Judging from the show the 8s lid Mouse command; the most patronage in these East End districts made prosperous bv the war. Gloves are priced mostly at 3s lid, though one does nor need to be very old to remember the time when Whitcchapel or Shorcditch would not have ventured to raise its eves above Is lid per pair. ' Silk down quilts marked at 27s Od are fpread temptingly in tne big shop windows, and it is obvious that they must lie bought otherwise so much window .space would not be devoted to them. In London, then, just as in the north and the Midlands, war earnings arc being used to give touches of luxury to homes that never thought to soar to the dizzy height of a silk bedspread. The East End is doing too well to mind expense, and the profits of eighteen months' Government orders allow of these and more expensive luxuries.