TAXES ON DRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 37, 12 February 1910, Page 11

TAXES ON DRESS.

NOVELIST'S PROPOSAL TO LICENSE DRAPER SHOPS. rrj£E CANKER OF WO^IAXHOOD." {From Our Lady Correspondent.)

LONDON, December 31. airs Flora Annie Sloe!, the well-known novelist, thinks tho time has arrived when dress should bo made to pay its i O II She proposes that women's dress should be taxed as a luxury. Xhe well-dressed woman, the lover of nrettv gowns, the woman who believes ifress'to be a speaking index of character, tje working g.rl whose dainty appetite *nr dress calls for constant self-denials h other directions —all have come under the ban °* lrs teeis exircme displeasure. The novelist has written, in most cutfas vein, to -he "Times." "Why should dress go scot free?" she !__s. ""Both Conservatives and Liberals n_l need nK.ney. and it would be better to license drapers' simps and take toll of their earnings, as we take toll of the liquor shops, than to finger the capital »f the nation or tax food. "It is time for men to put some check upon that canker of woman-hood, the pusEon for dress, which has already eaten nut the heart of our schoolgirls and japped the sanity of our society fonien. . . . Neither imitation Valenciennes, nor yeal mechlin. iheap tinsel, nor gold embroidery are necessaries of life.'' Neither are flowers necessaries of life, tor music, nor art. And would Mrs S;eel condemn us bitterly because some of us. in our depravity, have denied ourselves ih-at we might pay half a guinea to hear Paderewski when bands have discoursed much noise and jingle in the iireets gratis? Are we to be taxed because our gardens, being the pride of our sinful hearts, ire better than our neighbours'? IDEALISTS IN ERESS. The modern woman, it has been said, is altogether too much of an idealist i» ter clothes, and the truth, trrrown out as accnsUion I make bold to think should cot be regarded as such at all. Granted chat many women spend wicked sums on dress. Need all the sex be condemned? As well say the suffragette's dress upholds the beauty of the suffragettes ideal, which would he absurd, as her aim is supposed to be the furtherance of woman's "cause," and her frock is a hideous atrocity, far from art or any kind of beauty. One of the most graceful and bestdressed women that I know lives in the slams, and works there with an energy that demands that work be spelled with a capital letter. She is fascinating in every way. mistress of a sparkling gift of humour, sympathetic, brilliant in conversation. Yet in the East End I have seen her in a gown that could have graced a West End function most exclusive, with real lace at throat and wrists and an jmrnistakable train. How great is her sin! And not only does she always dress veil heTself, but she teaches her ideas to poor factory girls, and she holds the vain notion, as does the writer, that there is a philosophy of dress that is every whit as important as a knowledge of the catechism. And what is the result? This—that in one club alone she has a hundred pretty girls. Truly, they were not such when she took them in hand, and perhaps, judged by a severe canon of beauty, they are not such now. But so great is the power of the individuality and. personality of their leader, that each girl is worth her separate meed of attention, because she is s dainty specimen of womanhood who knows the value of making the most of herself. NO TWO ALIKE. Not all women—indeed, no two women —are alike, and, so, no rule save a very broad one can be laid down as to fitness in dressing. Some women in silk in the East End might be a hopeless failure. It is not hard to imagine, for instance, the "good" woman whose conscientious desire to improve puts her into the uncomfortable self-righteous state of always mentally regarding herself as on a pedestal. It is rank impertinence for her, if she were only clever enough to know it, to dress in such a palpably superior way. She is doing it for effect, and not to give genuine pleasure to others, and, between the two attitudes, lies a very world.

A memory comes to mc n,s I sit writing in this smoky London of the Sydney factory girls as I have seen them out for their water picnics, and I wondered what Mrs Steel's reflections would lead her to say with regard to that very large section of Australian humanity. The cheap, vivid-tinted silk blouses, the great picture hats, the gaudy jewellery would he described with a fine touch of scornful satire. WISH TO LOOK PRETTY. The great truth that it is natural te wish to look beautiful, and utterly unnatural for a woman not to want to do =o. is being put on one side in these

pressing days of strife for woman's rights. And since it is -woman's little weaknesses and foibles that endear her alike to man and woman (natutai woman!), it is not for those,who place •themselves oatside the pale of lovable failings to judge the others. Therefore, after Teadihg again the verydull reflection that "imitation Valenciennes, etc, is not a necessary of life/ I send a still wanner tribute to those poor, little, cooped-rrp factory girls whose drab lives have not had the effect of dulling their care for their appearance. Gaudy they may look, but they are expressing, in the only way they know

how, their ideal of dress, and, personally, it is easier -to read a beautiful ideal into their weaknesses than it is to find excuse for the hideous frumps who assume an extra degree of ugliness whenever they happen to be visiting the poor, or doing any kind of charity work. Woman has a duty in dress, and the determination to make the most of her beauty and grace, however small it be, will Dring to her moire than the privileges of admiration. It is always "worth wriile" to be a womari, it is gloriously worth while to be a dainty wholesome-looking woman. It never has been, and never will be, worth , wliile to he a frump.