Changing Fashion

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 323, 7 April 1928, Page 24

Changing Fashion

“Clothes are atrea? das'* | achievements, for -hey have enable - him to take his appropriate leaped ture about the world with hia of being confined o r dri.ea by cliaxt, like the beasts, but one of tq. - ~.u certainties of - ur a :s hat he aril soon be able to lay d-vo nj- rl burden ” The •' HI = changes :n d—m -he ; .imtn of Edith Shackle-: n is a greater proximation in protective quality between the costumes of men women. At present, we are ->?minded the two sexs. when f really dreseed for the evening, are dressed for djj ferent temperatures, and at evert dinner party and at every dance “the men are all too hot or the women are all too cold." It is predicted that this lack of correlation w;U not continue, and that there win be modifications jon either side. For instance, m e= , may cease *o wear protective cloth

and "a starched cuirass, while women will perhaps wear jus- a little more silk/’ and it is further ro*ed that:— “There are signs, too, that men are about to lose a certain rather charming romanticism they have lomr cherished about sports -lathes. For generations men have dressec: themselves up as though to brave all the dangers of the wild, all the rigour* of the tempest, before gc:r.g out to play any game or follow any out-door hobby. Women, coming later to games have shown that quite good golf car be played in the thinnes T and lightest of the new woollen materials. an*i that feather-weight oiled silk is ar adequate protection from rain. a modification of masculine sports armour has already set in and is likely to develop rapidly. “The tendency tova-d a slighter differentiation between men’s and women's clothes is likely to increase rather than diminish- The morbid preoccupation with sex which went hand-in-hand with 19th century prudery and made it almost improper to use blue ribbon for a boy baby's rosettes or pink for a girl's (or was it the other way about?* is not iikely to return to a generation which ''as more urgent things to wrestle with. “Working women have been quick to seize on the rational dress which rich women have devised for their sports, and it is not at all unlikely that women factory workers, charwomen, and others engaged in manual labour will before long wear some thing lik: the trousers in which leisured womeare now skiing in Switzerland. Is this, as in every other dress reform the newspaper photography is the most important factor/* Looking forward 59 years, or even 10, Edith Shackle ton sees the human crowd much more brightly coloured than it is to-day or than human crowds have ever been before. The sombre habit of the 19th century was. she reminds us. not a pinnacle of perfection, or a normal state of dress slowly achieved, but:

“It was rather an aberration from natural human taste made partly under the compulsion of the dirt of the Coal Age, partly owing to a selfconscious solemnity which settled on a generation which felt itself to be (and was! doing unprecedentedly clever things at an unprecedented rate. 0 “But even the Manchester Victorians would probably have worn brighter fabrics if they had had them. It most be remembered that the clear bright dyes, the lustrous textures to be seen on any shop counter now were not voluntarily rejected by our immediate ancestors. They simply hadn’t yet found out how to make them cheaply and in vast quantities as we do. “When durability was the prime virtue of a costume, black and indigo and gray were thought desirable, because one less easily tired of an inconspicuous colour, and also because i they were less likely to show stains. But durability is no longer thought deI sirable in clothes. We know now that the oftener we get new clothes and burn the cld. the less is the likelihood of infectious disease/’