WAR FASHIONS

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21215, 11 September 1940, Page 3

WAR FASHIONS

“BATTLE DRESS” BLOUSES (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, July 27 London dress designers have been showing autumn fashions, writes “Corisande” in the Evening Standard. Agents and buyers for Canada and the United States have been spending , hours studying dress styles for overseas customers. Here is a brief summary of the new fashions: (1) Shorter skirts for the daytime. “We must save material,” say the designers, so hem-lines are 17 or 18 inches above the ground—about two inches shorter than a year ago. (2) Slick-fitting jackets for suits with a well-defined waist-line, big pockets—lour is the ordinary allowance on a coat. Jackets come about four inches below the hipbone. (3) Wrap coats are very loose with a full back, are sometimes belted, or close-fitting to the waist and flare outwards at the hem. (4) Fur being on the “luxury” list, its use as a trimming is strictly rationed. The majority of wrap coats are plain and collarless; some have a shallow fur collar, and a narrow band of fur outlining the pockets. British tweeds and woollens are “star” turns. An agency for these materials has been opened in New York. “Two-in-One Suits English women this winter will have ample opportunities of proving that they can wear tweeds and tailormades more successfully than anyone else. Economy has produced the “Country into Town Suits,” a plain suit for the country, with a second sometimes fur trimmed, which transforms a country suit into a London outfit. Blouses modelled on “battle dress” lines are shown with tweed suits. Practical tailored tweed dresses to wear under fur coats are trimmed with soutache braid on collars and pockets; with petit point embroidery in bright coloured wools, or with bead embroidery of the kind that Victorian great aunts worked as covers for cushions and stools many, many years ago.