CHIC FOR GERMANS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 87, 14 April 1941, Page 11

CHIC FOR GERMANS.

FRENCH COSMETICS

SHINY NOSES NO LONGER POPULAR

(By ROSE PATTERSON.)

LONDON. March S.

With face powder and lipsticks getting scarcer and scarcer over here, there is more lamentation than ever by our French friends about the Xazis taking to cosmetics. There was a time when German theatres and cinema- and rc>taurants displayed notices such as:

"J'hc German woman does n«t >rnol<e. The Gorman woman does not paint herself."

And to bring these precept* the more readily into force, storm troopers with buckets of water, scrubbing brushes and cleaning soap every now and then made rounds of the eates and bestowed a thorough public cleansing upon any fair face that had dared to improve on Nature with a little powder and rouge.

All that has changed since the Nazis occupied Paris and other French towns and cities. No sooner had the Herman soldiers entered Paris shops than they started sending creams and lotions, and especially lipsticks, to their wives and sweethearts at home. There was a wild rush on face powder and rouge. Late last autumn the no-powder-and-paint front in Germany was routed, and so far had invaded France triumphed over the invader in the matter of cosmetics that special beauty courses were instituted all over the Reich to teach the decorous use of lipstick and rouge.

Courses held in the Berlin Saarlamlstrasse lecture halls were almost on military lines, it with (1) apply the cream; (2), smear with upward stroke; (3), smear across and so oil, but all the same one of the pillars of Nazidom had come crashing down. "Das Reich" said in one of its issues last November. "Shiny nose and draggled hair, do not always guarantee spiritual life." Marianne, with her chic, had triumphed over the Teutonic hausfrau ideal.

'J he Bour jois-Chanel organisation had one factory and then a second one knocked out by the German bombing of this country, but architects were adapting an empty building for yet a third immediately after. N"o wonder they called their new perfume la-t, autumn "Courage.''

1 lie Bouijois linn in Paris was the biggest ol its kind in the world, and its famous perfume, Chanel No. .">. was in\entcd by a Russian refugee. In sixteen years that scent made a" prolit of one million pounds sterling, or five million dollars. Supplies of it in London were so low at the end of last year, that one of Chanel's chief executives had to comb the \\ est End stoics and then pay full retail price for a small bottle of it for a present to his daughter.

What French women refugees think when they find their favourite perfumes and cosmetics unobtainable in England is not difficult to imagine, since thev know that tons and tons of those aids to beauty so dear to them have been and are still being carried out of France to the >er\ land that so lately professed abhorrence of all such decadent nonsense. Of course, the intelligent Frenchwoman always knew it was not Herman womanhood that stood out against everv artistic aid to beautv.

hat lias started tlie cosmetic avalanche from France into Uermuny is no doubt the improvement 011 nature that .Marianne. Fair Lady of Fiance, has now shown the German soldier at first hand. But the dainty jars and the lovely bottles, the tempting boxes and the delicate packings of all sorts have had something to do with it, too. The I"' each were ever experts in presenting their wares and, ;is my French friends say. helas that those beautiful containers should have broken down tlie sales resistance of tlie whole Xazi machine!

Ot course, mere bombs do not prevent the perfume and beauty preparation houses from carrying on from their English branches, but what with the cessation of supplies from the fountain-heads in Paris and the demands of "quota" and export regulations, we and our refugee friends are beginning to be a little apprehensive about the shiny nose. And, after all, we never did think it virtuous.—X. A.X. A.