I Know You By Your Powder Puff

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 41, 17 February 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

I Know You By Your Powder Puff

I SEE it quite a lot, you know. I sit opposite you in trams and watch you bring out your compact and your puff to fluff powder over your face. I walk behind you in cinema passages when you are coming out and watch you doing the same there. I look at you across restaurants and in dance halls and in cloakrooms . . . and I know just what kind of a girl you are. Sometimes the puff is new and spotless; that means in this' respect anyhow you're the right kind of vanity girl. Sometimes it is a bit doubtful; that means you're a bit careless. And usually it is so grubby it isn't fit to use. That means you must really pull yourself together. I know you're all -busy" people and that it isn't always eitsy to do everything you plan to do—like giving your puff a weekly wash. '• . . t But how's this for a way but of the difficulty. Instead of using a puff, use a wad of cotton-wool and throw it away after using it. It works in your handbag too, because you can wrap it in a pretty chiffon handkerchief, and there you are. Apart from cleanliness,-the importance of using something clean for your powdering is that a dirty puff eventually brings spots. And the same thing goes for a rouge puff.

I know you by your comb. If many of its teeth are missing; if it is. ditry and full of loose hairs, I think: "Here is a careless girl who doesn't think enough of her hair to wash her brushes and combs every time she has a fresh set." And broken combs don't work properly. Have you looked at yours with an impartial eye lately?

I know you by your handkerchief. If it is coloured, I decide that here if a girl who knows how quickly white handkerchiefs get dirty, and prefer* real colours to a nasty grey. But I hope that ahe has a spare white one in her bag as well, just in case she is going out in the evening. Two handkerchiefs are always better than one.

I know you by your .shoes and stockings. Too many of you seem to have a "blind spot" here. You're - perfection everywhere else, but your stockings. The seams curve madly all over the place; there are wrinkles round the ankles, and some of the darns! My grandmother—who taught me how to dam—would . have called them "cobbled." And many of the shoe heels I see «eem to spend most of their time turning over one way or the other.

I know you T>y your gloves. Even when you are wearing them I can often tell the colour of your nail varnish. Hole*. ... I And ragged bite of cotton that I have sometimes seen you trying to bite off in the bus! ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ I know you by the collars and cuffs on your frocks. You like white. Fm glad, because it is becoming and youthful—when it is white. But sometimes your trimmings start off their lives all crisp and fresh, and go on living for a very long time without ever having a revitalising treatment. And then you have to throw them out much sooner than you need have done because they are "finished." Have two sets —one on and one off. And keep the off one always freshly laundered and ready for the- transformation aoene.

I know you by the state of your frock. If it's spotty, I think here is a gir! who is a messy eater and doesn't wear an overall when she's helping in the house. It's eaoier and cheaper to wash an overall than to send your frock to the cleaners. Your skirt hem doesn't have to look like a scenic railway—neither does it have to be undone in parts. It is only the work of a moment to hem it up and it's .much safer. And if you can't get it straight yourself, stand on a table and get someone eIM to pin it up for you—always remembering, of course, to tell them to measure from the floor upwards.

I know you by your handbag. A weekly clean-out of your bag it essential. * It doesn't take very long with a brush and a spot of benzine —and you can put it in the air for a little while to take away any smell.