NEWS FOR WOMEN FROM ABROAD

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 93, 14 January 1936, Page 4

NEWS FOR WOMEN FROM ABROAD

Fads, Fancies, and People in the News

Dominion Special Service.

London, November 2S. Prince Edward George Nicholas Paul Patrick of Kent is very much in the news just now. Last week he attended his first official ceremony—his christening in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace, when, It is reported, he behaved with great decorum. Naturally details about his nursery and general routine are read with great interest, and it is expected that in a year or so he will be setting “little boy” fashions just as his cousins, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Alargaret Rose, now lead the way tn smart nursery fashions for small girls. The Duchess of Kent has just bought a new pram for him, which has been specially made to her order. The carriage is the last word in perambulating luxury, though it is very quiet and simple in appearance. “The Duchess was very anxious that there should be nothing gaudy about it,” a member of the firm which made it told an interviewer. “Therefore she chose a dark navy blue for the coachwork and linings. “It was only after some persuasion, too, that she consented to have the Duke’s coronet traced on the side in gold/’ Tlie carriage is fitted with cliromium-plated'springs and wheels, and the handle is of white ivory. A

special new mohair cloth has been used for the hood aud apron, which are'both lined with navy silk. This cloth is both silky and watertight. The pram is lifted with an extension which lets down, so that the length of the carriage can be increased as the little Prince grows. Talking of nurseries, I saw a very novel idea the other day. A low threefold wooden screen had been covered with chintz, with a series of pockets in various sizes to take all Ihe things which are so necessary for balhing mid dressing a baby. Everything could lie stowed a wav neatly and the screen folded almost flat when not in use, while, during baby’s dressing, it can be used to keep off draughts. “Peril” of Eyebrow Plucking.

Great consternation has been caused this week by the statement of a doctor at an inquest that eyebrow plucking is a “verv dangerous practice.” The inquest was on an 18-year-old Birmingham hairdresser, who died a week after plucking her eyebrows, infection having been set up from a pimple which appeared after the operation.

London beauty specialists, however, ridicule thb idea that plucking is in any way dangerous. Miss M. E. Disspain. secretary of the National Association of Master Ladies' Hairdressers, said that this was the first, case of the kind she had ever heard of. . “It is absolutely ridiculous to say that eyebrow-plucking is dangerous,” she stated. "You may as well say it is dangerous to cut toe-nails, tile your nails, or for men to shave. “Nearly every woman—Belgravia beauty to city shopgirl—to-day has her eyebrows plucked, and irrespective of whether she goes to a beauty specialist. or plucks them herself with tweezers, the risk, in my experience, is negligible.” And a prominent London skin specialist said that the risks—both extremely remote—were erysipelas or a crop of local boils which might spread ami cause blood poisoning. Sarah Churchill in London Revue. Sarah Churchill, lovely red-haired 21-year-olil daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Winston Churchill, has become one of Mr. Cochran’s young ladies. For the last two years she has been training at a school of dancing, and last week she wrote to C. B. Cochran ami askel him for a job in his new revue, “Follow the Sun.” Mr. Cochran made a few inquiries, looked up “Churchill” in “Who's Who.” and wrote to Mr. Churchill, asking bls opinion on ids daughter’s career.

Mr. Churchill at once replied that if his daughter wanted to be a dancer, and she was a good dancer, by all means let her be a dancer. So Mr. Cochran saw Sarah, and gave her a job. Interviewed after an eight-hour rehearsal, Sarah told me: "Yes, it’s quite true. I’m going to be a chorusgirl. This is my first stage job, and I’m just terribly thrilled.

“Dancing is one thing that matters to me. I don’t mind about a speaking part so long as I can dance.” Several of Mr. Cochran’s new young ladies are daughters of very wellknown people—Pamela Gordon, daughter of Gertrude Lawrence, Jacqueline Squire, daughter of Ronald Squire, and Jenny Nicholson, whose father is Robert Graves, the writer. Innkeeper Islibel. Miss Ishbel. MacDonald, Mi/ Ramsay MacDonald’s daughter, who used to act as hostess for her fa'ther, is shortly to become an innkeeper. She is negotiating for the purchase of an inn near High Wycombe (Buckinghamshire). The reason? She does not want to lose contact with the personal staff employed by herself and her father wjicn they were at No. 10 Downing Street. She has hot yet signed a contract, but it is now more or less certain that the inn she has in mind is the Old Plow Inn at Speen (Bucks). This is a picturesque seventeenthcentury building, lying in a hollow of the Buckinghamshire hills, not far from Chequers, the official country residence of the Prime .Minister. It has raftered ceilings, big oldfashioned fireplaces and historic staircases, aud although it has been modern-

ised in many ways in recent years, great care has been taken to retain its old-world atmosphere. When I asked Dr. A. Alackinnon, her brother-in-law, about it. he said, “Ishbel has not signed any contract yet. The negotiations are not likely to be completed for some time. When she left Downing Street it was natural that she should not wish to lose contact with the personal staff that her father employed there—so she is arranging to take over the inn to employ them.”

Back to the Kitchen. “Back to the Home and the Kitchen,” the avowed policy of the Nazis in regard to women workers, has not been very successful in Southern Germany. The latest figures published in Mun ich show that the percentage of women among total workers has dropped from 36.7 to 32.4 in 1935,. but the number of women employed in heavy and technical industries has risen from 1.100,009 to ,1,400.000. Women are employed in greatest numbers in present-day Germany in textile, paper, toy, food and metal industries. They represent an average of one-third of all the workers in these fields.

Meanwhile the long-lived tradition that German women are dowdy would seem to be disproved by the report from Berlin that German fashions—inspired by French creations, b'.r much cheaper—are rapidly becoming popular in European and overseas markets. Among countries which take hundreds of dresses from Berlin are South Africa. Australia, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. An order for 620 dresses has been placed with one Berlin dressmaking firm by South African purchasers. The Berlin dress trade, which is still mostly in Jewish hands, has many artists watching the Paris salons for inspiration.

Dress “Sanctions.” Tlie Italo-Abyssinian dispute, which lias furnished us with such military fashions as “frogged” and braided coats and plumed hats, is now having another repercussion in the dress world. Italian women are being urged in tlie Italian Press to adopt “sanctions” against—Paris fashions. One Italian paper reproduces the text of an invitation to a tea and dresa-show sent out by a well-known Rome dressmaker to her clients. On the back of the card appear the words: “Permanent exhibition of exclusive models from Vienna and Paris.” “Benlsslmo” for tlie models from Vienna, capital of a friendly nation, says the newspaper, but “malissimo” for the Paris models, capital of a sanetionist country.

“We are certain,” the article concludes, “that the Italian women who receive the invitation will not go to tea with such an amiable person, to whom sanctions should be applied.”