MEN'S CLOTHES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVII, Issue 10808, 31 December 1926, Page 6

MEN'S CLOTHES.

SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE DECAYS. The cult of slimness has arrived. Styles in men's clothes have been far too conservative in times past, both m materials and colour. Such are tho dicta of Mr James Weddell, who presided at the annual meeting in Holborn of the National Federation of Merchant Tailors. In his opinion, fine feathers represent something more, something of deeper significance, than the mere accident of fashion or of purse. "What period of history," he asked, "reveals the greatest heroism and adventure? Surely the Elizabethan period, when our great captains, who built up our Empire, were attired in ribbons, velvets, and silks of every colour in the rainbow." The inference is obvious enough. The dullness t and deadly respectability of men's wear in recent times must express a decay of the spirit of manly adventure. The tailors, in fact, have been the unwilling victims of their customers. Nor is it possible to prefer the apology that even dull and drab clothes may 'be well cut and distinguished. For it is not the man but the tailor who has imparted that distinction. The tailor in all these lean years of "deadly respectability" has been making the best of a bad job. "Too much modesty," said Mr Weddell, " has in the past been one of the fallings of the merchant tailor, but since the war his sense of pride of craft has developed.'' This is opportune, for there are now at last signs of a revival of that spirit which loves to express itself in bright colours. "Sports wear," in the phrase of the president of the National Federation, is becoming wonderfully variegated.