SYDNEYSIDE WITH JANET PARR From fashion features to financial columns

Press, 25 February 1977, Page 10

SYDNEYSIDE WITH JANET PARR From fashion features to financial columns

Last year it was patchy. This year it is fading. A couple of years ago patchy fading blue denim would have been something you read about in the fashion pages. But now you are likely to see it in the financial columns. The blue denim “thing” it seems is finally on the way out — at least as a total fashion look and retailers seem to think that the market will not really pick up again for another five years. Last year’s trading in denim was erratic, according to manufacturers and retailers who expect no real sales growth this year — or next year, or a few years after. Among the reasons given are that most younger people, particularly women already have several pairs of jeans and are turning away from them as an all-day, day-in, day-out uniform to

more dressed up clothes. , And the over-40s probably I have at least one pair of I jeans too. Denim built its original : reputation for work garments on its hard-wearing qualities. Now there may be an inclination for people to! 1 make do with what, they! have. This is a trend already! established to some extent! throughout the whole of a l somewhat-depressed fashion] ' industry. ] One result of the fading! i market in denim is likely toi ■ be that only the big estab-j > lished companies handling) well-known brands of jeans! i will survive. Some are, ; switching to other lines as] well, such as shirts, trousers] ; and children’s clothes, and] : not necessarily in denim. As! . one manufacturer comi mented: “Denim is the ac- ■ cessory now and not the i fashion.” t The saturation of the market — fashion being funny , business — may have > marked the beginning of the

.end of the big, blue bonanza.; ! Things had certainly come ai (long way from the jeans. I that started it, spreading through what you wore —: jeans, caps, bikinis, shirts,! jackets — to where you), wore it — bedspreads, wall-1 ! paper, carpets — and what] jyou wore it with — hand-]' jbags, cigarette cases .... ! But if the total look hasp gone, manufacturers and tra-ji |ders are still confident that' (blue jeans themselves will], (not disappear. Traditional, , (heavyweight dark indigo j ] jeans in the classic cowboy , style are selling better than ( lever, according to the man-! jaging director of one major manufacturing company. , I “They’re a life style,” he | [said. “Unless someone [thinks of something better, , and I can’t see that happening, they’ll go on tor ever.” ] Sexism course 1 Widely separated by time [ and place they may be, but both Germaine Greer and, the Greek playwright, Euri- . pides, have been put very , firmly in their places , recently by a couple of ' scholarly gentlemen concerned about sexism. Professor Ralph Hall, of • the University of New South Wales is busy , organising Australia’s first [ p o s t-graduate university 1 course on sexism in Australia. He says the course would have been impossible if the study of sexism had not gone past Greer. The professor says that he . has had an encouraging re-| sponse to the introduction of I the course, which is being!, put on by the university’s ' general studies department. Greer’s book, “The Female! Eunuch,” which rocked and] expanded the thinking of' militant women not so many years ago, is really for th’el' lay person. It is now regarded as an introductory' type of statement according'! to the professor. “Study of sexism has developed quite a bit and we]: would not be able to put on! a university course, let alone \ a post-graduate course, if we , [had not gone past Germaine , Greer. [ I “Really she has not written for the Australian condition and her book doesn’t 1 come to grips with any]' theoretical issues.” But studies of sexism in 1 1 Australia are not enough for ! a full course, so some over-!

seas material will have to be used, as well as specialist magazines. Chief among the post-Greer publications will be Ann Summers’s “Damned Whores and God’s Police,”• much acclaimed when it was| publshed as a remarkable in-1

| sight into Australian women, iand Miriam Dixon’s “The [Real Matilda.” | The other scholarly gentle- 1 man w-ho has been talking] !about sexism is the Anglican] (Archbishop of Brisbane, the Most Reverend Felix Arnott. | He was reading Euripides| (when he was 11, and says it was an experience which' I could well have turned him into a male chauvinist. “I remember reading in! one place that ‘woman is a soft thing made only for;, tears’ ”, he told a Brisbane] conference on health, physical education and recreation. I: “This type of thing leads!, to a subconscious stereo- [; typing of women into a par-! ticular role.” The Archbishop was a member of the Royal Commission on Human Relationships, and has often voiced concern about the erosion of civil liberties in the Western world. Through the inquiry he [said he saw examples of inflexible attitudes towards women in the workforce, and a need for a more flexible education system with closer relationships between school, parents and community. The growing child, he said, does not need to read, Euripides to be affected by sexist attitudes in literature. “The education system] is often to blame. Many ' children's books repeatedly ' show little boys in aggres- ! sive roles, little girls in j (passive ones. [ “One particular book I re-'j call had a picture of a[, (father and son in a boat], 'fishing while the daughters'j [sat on the river bank read- • ling. This immediately putsp I children into roles which arej; (carried over into adult lifeji I All the same, while the i Archbishop’s concern is i 'commendable, it might be as i (well to take a look at what i I the little girls are reading, : as they sit on the river !bank. The sexism which, he and other critics say riddles school books has already been under heavy fire from ' progressive women and ; teachers — male and female. ( Inquiries on how to root t it out are already under way < or promised. And no doubt j the way the wheels grind in , I these matters, the subject. | will find some place in Pro- ( [fessor Hall’s course too. t