DRESS HOUSES REOPEN IN PARIS.

Auckland Star, Issue 18, 22 January 1940, Page 9

DRESS HOUSES REOPEN IN PARIS.

Finnish Women's Wartime Services. (By ROSE PATTERSOX.) Something approaching normality has returned to Paris in the last week or two. Cinema* are now open till 11 p.m. and ihe numbe.r of them available is only a little below the average. Several theatres and music halls have reopened. The Odeon is now giving four performances a week and the. Opera and Opera Comique are both functioning. The number of their performances is limited because they are sharing the Salle Savart, home of the Opera Comique, since there are air-raid shelters close at hand which can accommodate 2000 people. Seating in the theatre is restricted to GOO. The Comedie. Franchise is drawing record attendances. Cafes on the boulevards are as full as ever at the aperitif hour and, though many of the regiments mobilised in Paris have left, there is still a good sprinkling of uniforms. These uniforms account to some extent for the brisker trade in the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Royale. The luxury businesses were badly hit at the beginning of the.war, but some of these businesses are reopening, counting on the patronage of officers in the army and their friends and relatives. There is new hope in the Rue de Rivoli, thought the visitors of peacetime that mostly made their clientele cannot be expected. An increasing number of dress houses is reopening to make warm clothes for the troops, and the fingers of the midinette have left aside the georgettes and satins of the piping times of peace for the heavy cloths of soldiers' greatcoat*. These work girls are thankful indeed for their re-employment. There is competition among the shops for new patterns in piper strips pasted on the windows to minimise the 'danger of flying glass. Palm trees, rustic bridges and whole village scenes are ingeniously devised in this paper strip idea, and strolling Parisians gaze at and comment on them as they pass. A strong movement is on foot to do away with the depressing blue lighting within doors everywhere. Window coverings that exclude the light from the street, but allow the interiors of (•hops, cafes and houses to be bright and warm are in much demand. Paris soon got tired of the blues and is banishing them wherever possible. The Sorbonne decided to hold its autumn examinations and the students are therefore back. This adds to the cheerfulness of the city' and the liveliness of the restaurants and cafes. Numerous Americans, determined to stay on and continue their studies, are among these young people. Fashions Stress Cosines*. There is nothing like a wartime winter, apparently, for bringing warmth and coziness into fashion. Even accessories must be warm and look warm. .There are crochet gloves in thick wools and others cut from warm materials of wool, as well as mitts, those compromises between gloves and mittens, some of which have a separate thumb and forefinger. ' Red felt palms and black melousine backs make smart mitts. Air raid shelter scarves are often in tartans; they are long enough to wind twice around the neck and the ends are finished with pockets. The outer pockets are for keeping the fingers warm; the inner ones, to hold valuables, powder cases and so on, are zip-fastened. For the house there are fur-lined or fur-topped bootees in place of slippers and mules, and felt bootees lined with •beep's wool that have non-slipping rope soles for air-raid emergency purposes. Spate, in velvets and in soft-coloured leathers, have appeared, and, of course, there are now plenty of top boots for women on outdoor service jobs. Felt and fur pillbox toques have square scarves of wool jersey falling at the back which can be drawn round and knotted beneath the chin as scarves. "Crusader" hoods also protect the head and the back of the neck from the cold. Since writers of the eminence of Augustine Birrell have confessed in the past to thinking that the Finns were modified Eskimos, living on seal blubber, and having a bleak and Arctic outlook on things—until one met them, to die-

cover they were almost English—it ie no wonder that we are all surprised to find Finland so go-ahead.

The hero of 'the Soviet-Finnieh talke, M. Vaino Tanner, has a great business reputation, for instance. His is the brain that controls Elanto, the Finnish Consumers' Co-operative Society, which has 350 restaurants and stores. M. Paaeikivi, who led the delegation, is not only an ex-Prime Minister, but the head of a gTeat banking house and a specialist in both Russian and Scandinavian politics. Hβ belongs to an old Swedish family whose former name was Hellsten. The change to Paasikivi at the end of the nineteenth century is a reminder of the romantic fashion of those daye for Swedee to adopt Finnish names.

And then, look at tile record of Finnish women. They were the first in Europe to gain suffrage rights, in 1906, and in the following year had nineteen women M.P.'s in the Heleingfors Parliament.

The Lotta Svaerd Society, founded as a memorial to the Finnish heroine by Finnish women, now resembles the English wartime women's auxiliary services. Members, now grown to 80,000, give their services free, spend hours in physical training, including skd-ing, ewimuiing and baseball, the national game, and cook for and render medical aid to soldiers in manoeuvres, even in the Arctic Circle to the Finnish eki-infantrv. —N.A.N.A. *