On Fashion

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 37, 28 March 1930, Page 24

On Fashion

ASHION is a fickle jade, always changing, last year favouring this, now that, and next year something else. Seemingly quite uncontrollable, her vagaries have far-reaching effects. Unemployment can be caused, an industry made or crippled, and the health of nations affected by the elusive creature. The present slump in the wool market is largely attributed to fashion. She no longer favours wool, silk having taken her fancy. Cotton, too, is out of favour to a large extent. The result is a hard time for shéep farmers, heavy losses for woollen mills and other concerns in the industry, with resulting unemployment; the crippling of the eotton industry, and a tremendous boon in silk and semi-silk goods. The one consolation of sheep farmers and the wool industry generally is that fashion is seldom constant for long. She may be ex~ected to smile again on wool, when she tires of silk, if no other material has taken her fancy. However, her constancy often lasts long enough to ruin an industry or a branch of it. The vogue of short hair for women, for instance, has meant almost the entire closing down of plants where formerly the manufactutre of hairpins, hatpins, and veils. .s carried on. That fashion can affect the health of nations is obvious. She decrees that a certain feminine figure be desirable, and tight corsets are worn; she favours long trailing dresses, and they are worn; and although the tight fitting hats she calls for are productive of innumerable headaches, we do not say her nay. Such an influence does fashion. wield that a writer in an English journal seriously suggests that she should be brought under control, but this is easier said than done. In the first place, no one seems sure where to find her or even what she is. Paris is often cited as her place of abode, but there are reasons for supposing that her influence emanates from the business interests that deal with clothing, dress, and adornment. An even shrewder suspicion is that she is already controlledand that by a small but clever group of people with a curious but sound combination of business instinct and artistic expression. It is agreed that she is a mystery and an undoubted exp’nse not only to the individual but to whole countries.Rolling Stone.