FASHIONS FOR AMERICA

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 107, 13 January 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

FASHIONS FOR AMERICA

PREVALENCE OF THE ENGLISH STYLES. Notwithstanding mass meetings of master tailors to advocate American fashions for American men the United States is still, so far as its tailoring is concerned, a British dependency. The Americans have tried many experiments without breaking down the prejudice against their own ideals of clothing. Attempts have been made to foist upon customers bogus British leather goods, and many other things have been palmed off on unsophisticated buyers, but it is no longer possible to deceive the discernging Americans who have travelled on the British side of the Atlantic. Another expedient was to dub every eccentric garment produced by New York tailors as "English" or "London" fashion in the hope of killing the prejudice by ridicule, but the native respect for British styles has not wavered. To-day the New York correspondent of the Daily Telegraph remarks, many of the leading American houses frankly admit that they must yield to the public, and instead of ostracising British garments they are parading them freely. The correspondent reproduces what he describes as a characteristic advertisement of a leading clothing house in New York. "Fellowcitizens," it runs, "we are Americans to the backbone; but when we sell English clothes we forget the American Revolution and fall over ourselves in singing 'Hands Across the Sea.' Through showers of falling aspirates we have waded to fashionable London tailors, and now we can deliver the goods you demand. There are single and double-breasted Raglans, with or without belts, and ulsters, fleece-lined or skeleton made, of various English fabrics, including those celebrated cloths that give you all the warmth you want and cheat you on the weight. Lounge suits, too, plenty of them, mostly in cheviots, that constant choice of the Englishman. And, lastly, the major-domo of masculine styles in the major-domo of cities, the inseparable companion of the traditional silk ( hat and foster-brother to an eye-glass, the cut-away. Prices range from £5 to £11." It looks as if the American lovers of British fashions have to pay» pretty dearly for their prejudices, but the most cautious regard for their dollars could hardly induce them to turn a deaf ear to the stirring appeal of their painstaking tailors.