Designing Men
T is a curious feature of our civilisation that in what is usually considered the women’s sphere, as in cooking and dressmaking, it i® the men who excel. Dorothy Neal White’s talk on Mainbocher, in the series The Gentleman Is a Dressmaker, gave me much food for | thought on the subject. It appears that \few of these great designers (it is an insult-one they are very sensitive toto call them "dressmakers") have adopted their profession through any means other than that of trial and error. The French-American Mainbocher, for instance, tried almost every form of art before he eventually discovered in himself a talent and a taste for dress designing. But why should the highest positions in an art of such feminine import be held by men? The answer might seem to be that men have better natural taste than women, but after a critical survey of the ties, socks,
and pullovers that walked past-me in the street the other day; I am inclined to doubt it. Something more nearly approaching the truth may be found in the fact that to make of dress designing an art in the true sense of the word a certain amount of. detachment is necessaty. And in a woman, where clothes and other women are concerned, there is as little likelihood of finding detach. ment as there is of finding an orangé grove in the Antarctic. bes
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 440, 28 November 1947, Page 8
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235Designing Men New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 440, 28 November 1947, Page 8
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