Brave New World For Women

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 284, 1 December 1944, Page 11

Brave New World For Women

T will be a wonderful world when women can put on their new silk or nylon stockings and know that whatever happens they won’t ladder, when father’s blue serge suit no longer gets

shiny, when Mary’s knitted jumpers don’t shrink in the wash, and _ when John’s wool trousers keep their creases even in the rain. According to recent Amesican journals this is not just ea fanciful dream.

They predict that it will not be so very long before chemicals are available for the ordinary person to accomplish these and other miracles, in the home. Chemists oe present working on the waterproofing and flame-proofing of circus tents in the hope of preventing another such horror as the cables announced

LESS recently, and they say they have developed other compounds which will double the wear of wool and cotton and make textiles mildew-proof. The new treatment, they tell us, will not affect the appearance of the materials, and the fundamental idea is so simple that they can’t understand why no one has thought of it before. To prevent runs in stockings, very fine grains of silica, deposited on the threads, make broken threads cling to their neighbours instead of unravelling. The same chemical, although the treatment must be repeated from time to time, is used to put a lustreless coating on blue serge, and to impregnate wool so that it achieves a permanent crease when _ pressed under heat. Now, when the tiny barbs that stick out of the side of the woollen fibre interlock, the wool. shrinks. To prevent this the wool is moistened to open the fibres and then a resin is injected into them to stiffen the barbs. We are probably over-simplifying the story-we are frankly out of our depth; but what will the fashion artists and designers do when our clothes no longer perish or become mildewed or shrink?