Craze For Frills Kills A Fashion By Excess

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30145, 31 May 1963, Page 2

Craze For Frills Kills A Fashion By Excess

[By ALISON ADBURGHAM Of The "Guardian"]

It is always interesting to see which fashions will outlast their season to serve a second year, or even a longer term. We have lately had an example of how inordinate copying can vulgarise a charming fashion, turn it into a craze, and kill it by excess.

I refer to the fashion for frills and ruffles, which was launched only a year ago. When the frills first appeared in Nina Ricci’s collection, we

liked their Edwardian flavour, deliciously feminine, faintly naughty. Some of the first ready-to-wear clothes influenced by the Paris originals were most attractive: dresses with delicate ruffles or neat pie-crust edging; chiffon blouses with bias-cut collars, cascading to the waist.

But when every manufacturer started adding frills, flounces, and ruffles to inexpensive garments, particularly to mass-produced blouses, the game was up. And so, this spring, there is a reaction.

Blouses are simple, tailored an-i, if not mannish, at Least boyish. Even a very cheap blouse can look charming if the cheapness is not in the styling but in the absence of trimming and in the economy of using a fabric which, although humble, is good of its kind in an unpretentious way.

Another blouse fashion taken up enthusisticaUy last year is still with us. This is the cravat blouse. Its continued place in fashion can be attributed to it being a basically neat, practical, and becoming style, appropriate in many different fabrics.

It was what the dress trade calls a “Ford”; and it keeps on running still. Indeed, it is likely to become a “classic’’ that is never out of fashion.

There will be an excellent choice of cakes, for this long week-end, for early shoppers today at ETHNE’S CAKE SHOP, 125 Cashel street.