THE VENETIAN SHAWL.

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 52, 24 November 1928, Page 18

THE VENETIAN SHAWL.

English visitors to Venice are at one with the Venetians in deploring the passing of the graceful Venetian shawl. The shops are still selling gaily coloured ones, at prices which would keep the average Venetian working class family for the best part of the dull season, when tourists are not; but these are bought and worn by tourists, mostly from the New World, who have broken the tradition as to colour, and, it is hinted, do not know how to put them on to advantage (says a writer in the “Observer”). The real Venetian shawl, black, with handsome fringes, is passing away. The war dealt it a death-blow; bobbed hair, “sports” clothes, and the standardisation of feminine fashions is giving it a hasty and deplorable burial. A Society for the Preservation of the Shawl does at various times organise competitions and award prizes to the wearers of the most graceful shawls. Then, every Venetian working-girl who can produce or borrow a fine specimen parades in it for one day, and again Venice looks like the city of tradition. But the moment the prizes are awarded the shawl is put away in the family chest and there it remains until the next competition is announced. The newspapers, the upper classes, many employers of labour lament the passing away of this dainty garment, which gives grace to every woman who has mastered the art of draping’it as it should be draped. But the tradition is dead; the “sports” dress has triumphed; lamentations are in vain. The once universal shawl has transferred itself to foreign shoulders and lost much m the process.