Resort Fashion Centre For Resort Wear

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30399, 25 March 1964, Page 2

Resort Fashion Centre For Resort Wear

Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland, has become a vital fashion centre in Australia. Buyers go there from the cities, flocking to see hotel and poolside parades; visitors arrive with near-empty suitcases and take them home full.

It has become the headquarters for designers and manufacturers of resort clothes, a fast-developing field of Australia’s own fashion industry.

The year-round balmy climate, the luxury hotels and holiday air has made “surfers” the ideal setting for progressive fashion promoters to show their specialist collections. Resort wear means casual dress with glamour—bikinis, which are getting briefer and briefer, hipster pants, becoming tighter, sun-tops which show an ever-widening expanse of sun-tanned midriff, shift dresses, made in luxury fabrics as well as outdoor cottons, and Hawaiian-style muu-muus to cover all shapes. Designers with imagination have little trouble introducing new ideas to a somewhat limited range. Subtle changes, even to a bikini, can make last season’s garments look “passe” to young moderns. Bikinis, With Confidence In a care-free atmosphere, hundreds of miles from the metropolitan tensions of traffic jams, queues and commuter time-tables, the most casual clothing can be worn anywhere with confidence. The bikini is accepted on the street, in hairdressing salons and supermarkets, so

long as the wearer looks chic in it. Good grooming is as important at the pool-side of a smart resort as in an expensive Sydney restaurant. “People like to dress to suit their surroundings on holiday,” said Mr G. Schofield, general manager of Chevron Queensland Ltd., when in Christchurch yesterday. Modern fashion designers were strongly influenced by the architecture of the buildings, the climate and colour of a place where their styles will be worn, he said. Formal Dining

wear for their evening meal used other dining facilities provided. Meals were served with music in all the restaurants; in some world-renowned artists entertained.

Most women guests liked to dress up for dinner two or three times during a holiday, he said. Even then they would settle for a shift, which had become almost uniform evening wear, in a rich silk or brocade. Fitting, restrictive dresses had no part in the pattern of living there. The emphasis was on high-styled comfort for all ages. The “Miss International Air Hostess”, 1964 contest will be held at Surfer’s Paradise liaunin June. Entries have been received from Ethopian, Brazilian, Italian, American, Indian, Chinese and New Zealand airlines, Mr Schofield said.

Mr Schofield said his company’s hotels at Surfer’s Paradise did, however, enforce the rule that women must wear dresses and men a collar and tie in the formal dining rooms at night. Guests who did not wish to change from their sun-