WHAT MEN LIKE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 259, 2 November 1933, Page 13

WHAT MEN LIKE.

Women have the reputation for being variable by nature (writes a wellknown actor). Clothes, which by common consent are expressive of character, indicate this tendency of theirs. Does not one year see women swathed in silken folds reaching to their ankles and looking for all the world like Egyptian mummies; while the next, voluminous frills billow and swirl well above their'knees? One moment fancy's flight carries them to ethereal heights in clothes. They mystically soar on clouds of lace and chiffon leaving us men uneasy and perplexed by the age-okl and eternal problem of elusive femininity. Next moment they swoop down on us in the most matter-of-fact and prosaic of tailor-mades, the line of which is so severe and uniform that it sauses us to wonder whether they are trying to emulate our own sartorial standards. Men might quite reasonably, as the result of these frequent fashion revolutions in feminine realms, be forgiven if they suspected women of unsuccessfully searching for a standard 'of dressing destined to capture their susceptible selves. I will try to give an outline of the standard of clothes that most men set in their minds as ideal for women. For fashions, we men care little, unless the fashions of the moment happen to coincide with our ideals. That is just the irony of things—women will spend a whole fortune and endless pains on some particularly ravishing and right up-to-date creation that is destined, firstly, to dazzle the male, and, secondly, to excite the envy of women friends. But more often than not it will leave men cold.

I think I am expressing the average masculine sentiment when I say that women who wear clothes that are essentially feminine are bound to win our approval. By that I mean that men like dainty clothes that give support to the male theory that women are frail and fragile, and so the fabrics with which they drape their lovely limbs rightly should be as delicate and ephemeral as themselves. But, although men like dainty and diaphanous frocks that show a woman's grace and physical charms to the best advantage these must be extremely simple in line and design —something that the male mind can understand. Perhaps it is that we have been accustomed from time immemorial to uniformity and regularity in our own clothes that reconciliation to women's waywardness in dress matters is difficult. More than anything else men loathe gowns that are a maze of bits and pieces, with ends and ribbons and trailing trains and lace frills. Neither do they like their women to be cased in dresses of luminous scales or sequins, as though they are monsters risen from the deep, nor to shield their forms in bands of metallic embroidery like armoured knights of old. There is another thing, although men like women's clothes to be distinctive and to command admiration, most of them would run miles rather than be seen in the company of a woman who wears clothes that make her conspicuous.

• All women who want to please a man by their dressing—and, of course, .every woman does, for it is well known that most women, however vigorously they may deny it, would rather have a stare of ill-disguised admiration from a bus conductor , than a whole string of insincere compliments concerning their clothes from their women friends— should never resort to imitation in dressing, for this is man's greatest abhorrence. By imitation I mean bows that tie nothing, buttons that only pretend to come through button-holes, and clasps and buckles that don't do any work, but are put. on as ornamental afterthoughts. To my mind, too, these certainly do appear futile, and I can quite imagine all men disliking them. I am sure we would never countenance our tailors constructing pockets . that were merely decoration, nor ties that looked as precise 011 our dressing tables as round our necks for the reason that they were ready to wear. But perhaps the most important thing a woman out to please men in her dress should study, is avoidance of fashions that tend to ape male attire.