“As Now Worn ”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 910, 1 March 1930, Page 18

“As Now Worn ”

New Silhouette and its Perils

■ Y friend Bert is pretty badly worked up over women's clothes*. He has about lost all hope in the race. It went while helping his wife choose some new gowns (writes Merrill Denison in an amusing article written for an American newspaper.) Since that fateful afternoon when his faith fled, Bert has gone about like a misanthrophic bloodhound, looking for knees, and baying with wrathful anguish when he finds a pair hidden from view by the dernier cri in skirt lengths. The new waistline induces in him a mild hydrophobia and the sight of every fashion magazine causes him to twitch all over. “Danison,” he said to me while the aloe-juice dripped drop by drop into his morning coifee, “have you observed the New Silhouette '!”

“Not particularly,” I said. “Ive been working. Have you?” “I have, and it has rid me of my last beautiful illusion. All my life I’ve been a great believer in women. X thought them the best bet We had. Given half a chance I was certain they would amount to something. When woman suffrage was still a good joke, I saw nothing funuy in it. I wore a yellow button with ‘votes for women’ on it and was one of the five members of the Men’s League for Women Suffrage. “Every advance made by the sox has seen me on the side-lines calling for three cheers and a tiger front the assembled males. I was one of the first, yes-yes men when bobbed hair undid what the safety razor had done to the barbering business. My happy voice was heard in the market place wlien the twenty-four pound alpaca and white tape bathing suit gave tv ay by uneasy stages to the four-ounce memorial to Annette Kellerman. “When-knees made their appearance on the public streets for the first time since the original Olympic Games I wrote letters af welcome to the papers. As each year their clothes grew simpler and more sensible, my faith in the future grew more certain. I looked forward to the day when women would have this fashion business fairly well settled and then go on to something of importance. Stopping war, for instance, or any of the numerous little jobs we men have fallen down on. “I believed in the New Woman. 1 was a convert to her Freedom, Intelligence, Emancipation.” Bert sneered sardonically. “New Woman! Freedom! Emancipation! Idle words. They mean nothing. Women are slaves.”

"Whence these morbid thoughts, Bert?” I gently queried, for I saw that I was dealing with a man who was not himself, nor at the moment anyone else T. could recall. “Among other sources, my wife,” Bert sourly replied. “I ha\-e admired, respected and loved that woman. I thought she had intelligence and common sense. I thought her spirit too free to submit td the silly, shifting vogues of dress designers. I thought she was among the new women. Now I only love her. She’s as old as the hills. She asked me to help her pick out some new original creations in one of those little shoppes intime and ontime which are dedicated to the mode and where, oh so many treasures from Paris have already been discovered by very many of those who really matter or so the shoppe claims. “We entered the shoppe. Having been studiously ignored for some minutes, we were approached by the fellow who owned the place. I thought he was going to turn us out hut 1 found that he only wanted to insult us. Goddess of the Ice Pack “He took one look at me and decided I was something the vacuum cleaner forgot. It was mutual. He then smirked aloofly at the wife. She stood for it. She accorded this hair tonic signature more respect than I have received in my entire career as father, husband and provider. “She said she would like to look at some evening dresses. The news didn't excite him particularly. He yawned, thought about it awhile and, sneering pleasantly, to himself, left us. “Don’t you think we’d better go now? That bird will never let us buy anything,” I said to the wife but she was crooning over some oh so flattering new creations in a show case. I was tip-toeing to the door when suddenly I got a chill. I looked around and from behind the Louis Binge screen glided a Superior Saleslady. This girl was so cool she could have wintered in Baffin Land without her breath showing once. “Who is the lone goddess of the ice pack?” I asked the wife. “ ‘Shhh,’ she answered. ‘That is Mademoiselle Julie Boh Bon, the head courtier.’ “I let the matter rest there, and after a couple of polite remarks had splintered on the floor, Greenland’s daughter got down to business. The wife and she disappeared into the ice chest while I stayed outside blowing on my hands.

“A few minutes later the wife appeared in one of the new, oh, so dresses. The first sight of he*brought back old times with a rush. She looked exactly like my aunt did the night of the Duke of York’s reception around 1905. She left the room 1929 and came hack 1909 and looking 20 years older. “ ‘ What wrong?’ I asked. ‘Why the gay nineties costume?’ “ ‘That’s the dernier cri. Yeery smart,’ said Nanook of the North. “ ‘How do you like it?’ said the wife. “I looked the creation over. It was exactly the sort of thing my sister used to dress her dollies in. You know, like a badly wrapped parcel that has come undone at one end. “ ‘Would you actually appear in public in that voice from the past?’ I asked the wife when we got outside. “ ‘That one, or something just as bad,’’ she answered. “ ‘Even if one could buy anything but these new- dresses, no one would want to make herself conspicuous by wearing it.’ “ ‘You’re w-illing, then, to sacrifice the gains of 20 years at the first stupid yap from Paris?’ I demanded. “ ‘I certainly don't propose going around looking like a scarecrow,’ she answ-ered. The Old Shape Coming Back “That ended the discussion. There was nothing more I could say. I left her to brood by myself. I began to notice women on the street. Many of them looked strange and oldfashioned. Where simplicity had been there was the old shape coming back. “Denison, if you admire the outline of the athletic girl, fill your eye. because she will not be long with us;

the plush horse of the late nineties may be here ’ere the geese fly north once more. And they will laugh the whole way up. Never Flinch Where Fashion Order* “If you like your wife to look herself and not like a fancy dress hour glass, stay at home and admire her while you mas-. Some day you ail! return to find a joke about the gasnineties waiting for you in the front hall. It will have the wife's face, but that’s all you 11 recognise. It will be disguised with pain. Her eg* will be gone, her waist will be closehauled, and her hips will blossom like the cabbage. “Queen Elizabeth ran England, defeated the Armada and laid the foundations of an empire dressed in * small haystack, half a horse collar and the stuffing from three old palace chesterfields. Joan of Arc saved France, while wearing a dainty creation of hammered tin-plate overlaid with slabs of malleable iron. Carrie Nation brought the drought to Texas in a 12-yard skirt, an axe and bulletproof stays. Mrs. Pankhurst 'won votes for women handicapped by ISlb. of dress goods, and not a single ankle was ever seen in the Covered Wagon. “Do you think our present-day women will flinch where fashion orders? Never! They will drive their motor-ears in skirts big enough to make tarpaulins for them. And if the skirts do not get too cumbersome for tennis and golf you know what will happen, don’t you?" I admitted that I did not. "There will be a tremendous revival of the ancient sports of croquet and archery,” said Bert. “Let Paris suggest that stilts are the latest thing, and our homes will look like Swis* lake villages.”