IS IT UGLY?

Taranaki Daily News, 10 January 1920, Page 6

IS IT UGLY?

THE QUESTION OF THE BAKEBACK FASHION.

"If actresses only knew how ugly is the bare-back style," wrote Mr. E. A. Baughan in a recent issue of the London Daily News, in a note on the dresses in his review of the latest musical play, "they would refuse to go undressed." Madame Alice Delysia, however, whose back first set the fashion in London, does not agree with him. "If one has a beautiful back—why not V she said to a Daily News representative. "It is all a question of line. A 'bare back' dress is impossible with a short skirt, but Jong trains supply the necessary continuity, and restore the beauty of line, which is what all draping should aim at."

A celebrated artist took the opposite view. "It is not that the bare back in itself is ugly," he" said, "for the bacik of a 'naturally' semi-draped figure, such as the Venus de Milo, is in itself a thing of beauty. But the present stage fashion results in an unnatural draping of the body, because the line of the drapery follows an unusual curve from the base ofthe throat to the middle of the back. This, if not actually ugly, is at least disj tinctly ungraceful, since the natural sym- | metry of line of the body is destroyed."

Mr. Charles B. Cochran, the Wellknown theatrical manager, said: "It depends on the back. A beautiful back is one of the most perfect things in the world, aa it is one of the rarest. "I was discussing this question with a very charming lady not long ago, and she said she must go to see Mme. Delysia again as she had 'a really beautiful l>ack.' If is an extreme fashion, and can be very ugly, but as a fashion there is nothing essentially ugly in it."