SYDNEYSIDE WITH JANET PARR Psychology and fickle followers of fashion

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33512, 18 April 1974, Page 5

SYDNEYSIDE WITH JANET PARR Psychology and fickle followers of fashion

Professor Gibbons is ' saying that perhaps the time is ripe to have two fashions going side by side — something like ' the nineteenth cenutry, when young girls had , short skirts and women had long ones. Professor Keith Gibbons, of the University of New England, at Armidale, in! northern New South Wales, has been talking about the “traumatic, wounding, fearful" experience the fashion; industry suffered when it! tried to introduce the maximidi; “one of the major dis-! asters of the clothing in-! dustry," he called it. Fashion, he says, reflects; to some extent ideas and . ideals of the time; the wav people see themselves ant! their world. The mini, the! mini-mini, and the micromini were manifestations of ! the youth cult — extrovert, casual, and rebellious. Reflecting no ideas or ideals, the maxi-midi was before its time, and it failed.

According to Professor Gibbons, most people seem to accept the fashionability (his word) of clothes — they agree on what is fashionable. Even so, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will! wear clothes of the fashion, although they can be persuaded to accept a fashion. ! And they are prepared to 1 deduce things about people! from the clothes they wear, even from fashion pictures l with the heads covered — like the number of boy

friends the wearer has,! whether she smokes, drinks, likes dancing, art galleries; 1 whether she is introvert or extrovert. Professor Gibbons is enlivening a little of a rather' dull week-day morning by| talking over my radio. And in case you are wondering (why a professor should con-, cem himself about some-i thing as frivolous as women’s fashion, the ex-i planation is that a few years ago Professor Gibbons was! trying to persuade some; women students that psy-i chology was an interesting subject. He suggested that, to! prove it, they might study the psychology behind some of the clothes women wear. What he is saying now, al : though admittedly he isn’t able to treat it at great: depth, has come out of that study. TWO FASHIONS And so to this idea that what we need are two paralled fashions; something to separate the women from the girls; that those aged more than 25 have been feeling neglected and that fashion is just for the very young, and that there is nothing around that they want to wear. But here one must protest. The professor does not seem to have been doing his homework. Or at least not lately. And not in Sydney, where you will not find a single dummy knee showing 'in a single shop window. 'And the tweeds and camel coats, wide lapels, raglan 1 sleeves, long suit jackets and tailored shirts are cheek: by jowl with the shirt-1

waister dresses and pleated skirts and (hard to believe after all this time) twinsets. The fashion experts have a word for it of course, “classic". What it boils down to is that fashion has rediscovered women. Here are all the clothes women over 40 ever owned and liked (it is almost nostalgic the way they conjure up I those days of 15 and 20 years ago), when the world 1 was a lot younger, and so !were you. I I think the good professor 'will have to do some more ! research. Although in these .first autumn weeks that have given us some hot late summer weather with the rain, the girls still totter off to work each fine morning in mini-skirts or jeans, and skimpy tank tops, and those towering clogs that nobody seems to like — not even the people who wear them. And an advertisement for office girls for the state public service vrings howls of protest from the girls already working there who reject the image of the girl in the advertisement sitting at her desk in a demure (they say frumpy) dress. This isn’t, it seems, what they like to wear to work, and they don’t want to be identified with it. We must avoid dullness. That is the opinion of the fashion experts who warn us solemnly that if we don’t have the flair to put a bit of sparkle into it this classic style is going to look awfully dull. Perhaps so. Yet one wonders if after all the public nudity and near-nudity of the last few years mere ! clothes could be any duller. I So it is a relief to think that

I in spite of a few attempts to! import the qprious' North i American fashion Sydney is 'not apparently going to be 'treated on any large scale to .that ultimate in lack-lustre exhibitionism — streaking. ’ We have had the ratio- ’ nalists of course, one or two iof them, explaining to us, .very carefully, that streaking is the ultimate in proTests, that to strip and run naked through the streets is the last great, glorious gesture. But the rationalists do not seem to have rationalised enough to have convinced large numbers of people to go out and streak, at least not in public. i It could, of course, have i something to do with the ! fact that streaking, even if l-you are not wearing your ! clothes out while you do it, ! .can be very expensive. i Under the Summary Offences Act, a streaker is liable to a fine of §lOO. ! Fines, already imposed on those who decided to try it early have been fairly stiff. Streaking, according to the act, amounts to “indecent exposure in public places within, or within view of, a public place or school” — a remarkably dull and depressing description. But not without a chuckle in it if you look carefully. This particular section of the act is No. 96. A Candadian visitor tells me that Canadian television viewers are now. going popeyed watching the nude and ! naughty nightly goings on in That now legendary apartiment block, “No. 96”.