IS IT GOOD-BYE TO THE SKIRT?

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 59, 1 June 1927, Page 5

IS IT GOOD-BYE TO THE SKIRT?

There appears to be approaching us a change in women’s dress such as the history of fashion has never before seen. For however women have dressed in the past, the emphasis of distinctively feminine clothing has always been on drapery, on the skirt. Judging by the models shown at this year’s most exclusive dress displays the emphasis is now—to be quite frankon legs.

Skirts are not only shorter and still shorter, above the knees in many instances, but they tend more and more toward transparency. The smart little sports suit of the hour, made probably in angora and crepe -de chine, is not worn over a petticoat but over very neat, matching knickers. Evening frocks of lace make a point of rer vealing the satin breeches worn be-

neatli; the breeches are a deliberate part of the creation, the dress designer visualising the model that way before it was made. All evening frocks and many afternoon frocks show the outline of the leg through the skirt. If p tticoats are worn they are so short that they can be better described as tunics; they end somewhere midway between the hip and the knee. Vain Protests Exquisitely fragile draperies, fringes of silk and pearl and feather, are seen on many evening gowns and sometimes these are moderately long, but the skirt itself is shorter than ever, or looks so by contrast. The emphasis is not on the filmy drapery, the hanging rdfres of milky pearls, but on the silk-clad legs that move in and out of these charming decorations. It is no use to hold up the hands in horror at the fact that legs are seen, for we are going to see still more of them. Old-fashioned people are sometimes not quite logical. Many of them are not at all out out at the sight of a girl on the beach in her bathing-dress, far less at a motoi* cyclist or farm-worker clad appropriately in tunic and breeches. But if a fraction o*’ leg above the knee i ? exhibited by a walking suit consternation is expressed. “Why wear skirts at all?” a woman asked me the other day in what she meant to be withering irony. My reply was, “Because they are pretty.” I cannot see that they are necessarily the essence of modesty, nor that the absence of a skirt is necessarily the reverse. So much depends on the manner of the woman and on the fitness or unfitness of the occasion. Surely it would be a good thing to suppress the skirt almost out of existence for all sports and country clothes. S Yety, comfort, smartness and delicacy would all thus be assured. The Reckless Ankle

When long skirts were worn years ago it was considered a little reckless to reveal an ankle, and the lifting of the skirt to show the lace petticoat beneath was an action that could be made deliberately provocative. Hov much less self-conscious, after all, is our modei-n girl in her abbreviated skirt! The coming change may be due to caprice, but I do not think it is due to decadence. And if vve do go about looking something like Shakespeare's Rosalind and Viola in their boys clothes, need we cease to De womanly? A HIGH SALARY Miss E. Beesley, who was recently appointed manager of the newly formed West End (London) branch ot the Southern Life Association, is said to be earning £IO.OOO a year Miss Beesley’s appointment brought her several offers of marriage, mostly from unknown admirers, but she announced to all her suitors that she preferred her career to marriage. Never screw taps down hard, but just sufficiently to stop the flow of water, and so prolong the life of the washer.