BEAUTY AND UTILITY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 15, 23 February 1914, Page 4

BEAUTY AND UTILITY.

The need of the moment , for the woman who has to think about the life of her clothes, and yet who does not wish to achieve merely a virtuous dowdiness, is a coat and skirt which shall have smartness of line, something of the personal distinction, which makes all the difference between the one and the many,, but which will present a certain amount of resistance to the chances of the weather, which must of necessity be reckoned with just now. Although we have long ago relinquished the idea, once so fondly cherished, that a well-turned-out appearance* cannot possibly be compatible with utility, there are still, some lingering remains of this feeling to be traced in the fondness for dreary drabness which distinguishes so many o£ the Englishwoman's hard-wear f suits. | A WHITE ELEPHANT. I was thinking over this curious survival from the dark ages of the Art of Dressing, and it occurred to me that the fault probably lies at least equally with the designers who lead in the field of fashion, and who seem to lose. sight of practicability in their own ideas of beauty. But real beauty, I think, can never exist side by side with unsuitability. And so it may well be that many women have abandoned the useless effort to "follow the fashion,'' which leads them to a useless chase with a final result which is neither aesthetically pleasing nor satisfactory, so far as efforts at economy and durability are concerned.

As a result of this train of thought, I felt impelled to think out a suit which would neither disgrace its . wearer on the score of smartness nor prove a white elephant in the wardrobe (to drop into an Irishism) because of its unsuitability in unexpected encounters with weather variabilities; GRACE AND SEVERITY. Here, then, is my idea. Fashioned of one of those new and altogether delightful chamois cloths, in a dark shade of elephant grey—this shade, by the way, is mueh more universally becoming than the lighter silver and Quaker greys—the coat, to begin with, is cut on extremely plain lines, with just that suggestion of outline, of gracious curves, which is still insisted oh. It. is almost devoid of ornamentation, apart from the large braid motif which acts as fastening, and the small collar of musquash consequently gains in distinction. The* tiny buttons which are carried up the sleeve to the elbow are repeated on the skirt, also severely plain. This severity of line is, however, broken by the inverted pleat which is arranged down the centre front, and which allows the requisite ease of movement in walking. As I have outlined it, this design is particularly suitable for town wear, or for the more social aspects of country life. For real wear and tear, one of the softer varieties of serge might be employed.—'Janet Gray, in the "Daily Express." ■