SYDNEYSIDE, WITH JANET PARR Fashion wheel spins back to 1950s

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33213, 1 May 1973, Page 7

SYDNEYSIDE, WITH JANET PARR Fashion wheel spins back to 1950s

It used to be said that if you put a garment away for 10 years it would become fashionable again. The mind boggles at the thought of a wardrobe packed to the doors with everything you’ve never managed to wear out waiting for another spin of the wheel.

It does not really work out like that. The wheel invariably takes a bit longer than 10 years to snin. And for some fashions it never does and never should. The returning bosom and waistline are not, mercifully, to be achieved in 1973 by whalebone and tight lacing. But the 1973 look in Sydney is to be achieved by thinking back to the kind of suit you owned in the 19505, the classic. It was a basic in every woman’s wardrobe, that went anywhere, with pleated skirt and the fitted jacket buttoned up with neat revers. Everybody had at least one—and probably

threw it away, cut it up or wore it out for digging the garden as the “classic” look wilted under the successive onslaughts of the sack line, the tent line, the A-line, the sheath, the “little girl—dolly bird” gear, the mini-skirt, and the maxi-skirt/ Now here we are after 20 years, awash again with suits. And not just the suits are classic. The fabrics are, too—tweeds, herringbones and Prince of Wales checks in colours that are also classics, browns, golds, camels, and beiges. There is grey flannel as well. One department store has a window full of it.

For “classic” you can, and the fashion writers often do, substitute “English” and it’s the way Englishwomen have (theoretically at least) always looked, picnicking, for instance, in well-bred fashion at the point-to-point or the polo. The difference is that the fabric may now have some synthetic content (although there is a certain disenchantment with synthetics these days) and that the word “suit” may include trousers. Fashion may insist that trousers and the trouser suit are finished, except as casuals, but there are still plenty about that are not as casual as all that and seem definitely designed to go to town.

After a suit, the next best thing to buy is a jacket. To wrap up the 1973 look you add a skirt, preferably pleated, and the shop racks are full of them. Traditionalists who never gave them up have always known where to find them. And if you could not get one ready-made in your size, pleated woollen skirts have never gone out of the pattern book of a reputable Melbourne - based tailoring chain that makes to measure.

But mostly the customers have been the over-355. The skirts in the department stores are aimed at a much wider range of customers,

some of whom may never have worn a skirt since they left school a few years ago, preferring pants and jeans. At the moment nobody is really rushing to buy. A burst of warm weather has kept summer clothes on the go after the late Easter and probably a good many women are weighing up what they need and what they can afford before they actually go out to buy it. The “new” classic look is mostly made of the classic fibre, wool. And while the wool growers may be chuckling over recent sale prices and thinking the good times have come back, retail prices for woollen garments have risen, are still rising and will probably rise even more. In fact, the cost of all clothing is going up.

Prices rising A fashion buyer for a chain of variety stores told me that for the first time they would soon have garments on sale priced at more than $2O, whereas their ceiling up to now has been around the $l4-$l5 mark. At the lower range of the price scale that’s quite an increase. In the higher ranges, too, prices have risen considerably so that women who would once have bought two garments are buying only one. Apart from the classic suits, jacket dresses, skirts, sweaters, and shirts, the short coat is back, usually wrapped round the body and kept together by a tie belt. Topcoats are often a longer version of this, or they can be neatly double breasted, buttoned up to the neck with a flared skirt below a fitted top. Lengths are mostly on the kneecap.

Hats are forecast to come back, neat and fitted to the head, something .like the cloche. But this remains to be seen, although with the decline of the wig some women may want something to cover their hair other than a headscarf, however elegantly tied.