GERMAN DRESS MATERIALS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29145, 4 March 1960, Page 2

GERMAN DRESS MATERIALS

Businessman’s Visit

The New Zealand textile market was open-minde'd to new trends in fashion and design, said Mr W. Roediger, a German businessman, in an interview in Christchurch.

During a world business trip, Mr Roediger is visiting Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and South Africa, as a representative of a German firm of high fashion women’s dress materials.

The reception of these materials in New Zealand had been most encouraging, said Mr Roediger. The extent of textile use in this country was amazing for such a small population, he said. New Zealand and Australian women were some of the best dressed he had seen in the world, said Mr Roediger. “Today if something becomes fashion in the European centres, the trend is immediately noticeable in New Zealand.’’

However, there was a danger in New Zealand, said Mr Roediger, that because of the difficulty of obtaining locally the various necessary colourings and chemicals New Zealand textile mills would find it more difficult to produce high fashion materials that the average woman could afford.

In his home factory at Augsburg near Munich, Mr Roediger said machines could be continuously engaged in high quality fashion production involving wide ranges of chemicals.

Warning for N.Z.

Without competition, New Zealand textile manufacturers faced the danger of not developing these fashion lines. “But New Zealand cannot stop her young women from being interested in the fashion world,” he said, “f ashion is made up by the consumer II comes from the people and because of this 1960 will be a festival year in fashion, with the emphasis on change in fashion and colour combinations, rather than ip change of styles.

In this field New Zealand had a chance to prove that it was still .one of the most interesting of textile markets, said Mr Roediger. During his tour of New Zealand, Mr Roediger is showing samples of various textiles his firm now exports to 40 countries throughout the world. The fabrics are mixtures of pure spun rayon and wool, and show a wide range of multi-coloured patterns, variations on the famous Black Watch tartan which is still the basis for much of the present day designing of women's dress fabrics in Europe.