£10,000 FOR CLOTHES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 171, 22 July 1941, Page 11

£10,000 FOR CLOTHES

AIR RAID VICTIMS WOMEN'S MASS BUYING What woman at one time or another has not wished that she possessed unlimited money to spend on clothes? There are times, maybe, when she would dearly like to buy articles for her wardrobe by the dozens, instead of, soberly, one at a time. Fortunately, or unfortunately, few have the opportunity to indulge this weakness. Each week Mrs. Evelyn Lawrence and two other young women of the Women's Voluntary Services in Great Britain have to buy between £10.000 and £15.000 worth of goods, mostly clothes, for bomb victims and evacuees. They are in charge of the purchasing department of the W.V.S. and their office resembles the buving room of a departmental store. " No wonder they think of outfits by the thousands! Since last July when their mass buying started, they have spent £200,000. This is how the £200,000 was spent. Men's outfits bought numbered 7750; youths' outfits. 1550: women's, 5820; girls', 1320; schoolgirls'. 970; schoolboys', 970; and infants' under five, 970. Mrs. Lawrence keeps sample outfits in her office. She estimates that it has cost £3 10/ to cover a man and £2 19/6 a youth with overcoat, jacket, trousers, shirt, pullover, shoes, underwear, socks and pyjamas. Women's and maids' clothes were much cheaper; they cost 45/ and 36/, the money buying a top coat, dress, shoes, stockings, underwear, corset and nightdress. Schoolbovs and girls had been clothed completelv for 30/, and "under-fives." who had been provided with double sets of underwear, cost 19/6. Mrs. Lawrence and her colleagues have become as shrewd buyers as the professionals who trained them in the first place, and are always ready to give them expert advice. The funds they mainly draw upon are the American Red Cross and the Lord Mayor's Funds, the latter being exclusively for air raid relief.