A NEW VOGUE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 81, 30 December 1940, Page 4

A NEW VOGUE

The Basket Habit

In a year women have changed their ideas about baskets, and so lightened and brightened their shopping. Till the market was swamped with baskets of all shapes and sizes of local and Pacific Island manufacture, it as simply not the vogue to be seen carrying your shopping purchases in such a receptacle. It was far more ladylike to have one’s parcels “sent,” or carry them by their strings—a cumbersome business. Perhaps the war has had something to do with the new fashion. Firms cannot so readily deliver small purchases, and women no longer believe it beneath their dignity to carry things for themselves. Take Christmas, 1939, for instance. The trams were packed with humanity clinging to parcels—dropping them, losing them, getting tied in knots over them. This year the basket vogue has proved a boon, a timesaver and a comfort in trams and shops. Scarcely a woman was to be seen without one on the last few days before Christmas, 1940, with the result that there seemed less congestion everywhere, and women replaced their old harasse - last - minute looks with happier expressions that had a beneficial effect on those with whom they came into contact. And how happy some husbands must he with the new situation created by this happy vogue! No longer arc they the agonized parcel bearers, despondently trailing their wives on shopping tours; in fact, the wife often prefers to carry her smart basket herself. May the basket habit thrive!