MRS. TAFT AND THE TAILORS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 111, 12 May 1909, Page 9

MRS. TAFT AND THE TAILORS.

CAMPAIGN FOR. PATRIOTIC DRESSES. Mrs. Taft, the President's wife, has formally joined the ranks of those who are waging war to the knife against the tyianny of Parisians fashions in the wearing apparel of American women. A convention of fifty-two ladies' dressmakers from all parts of the United States was held in New York recently. A letter was read from the wife of the President expressing her hearty wish for the'succes3 of the propaganda and of the exhibition which has been organised for the autumn with the object of showing the superiority of American designs over those of Paris. The proud claim is made that, 75 per cent, of the designs sold in the United States as Parisian are in origin purely American. The Paris dressmaker, it is proclaimed, "runs to fluffiness and concealment. The. American woman demands a more human model." It is doubtful, however, if the propaganda will be assisted by the boast made by iho president of the convention that "even tho hipless gown, which is credited to French tailoring de^g-iien., is an American creation." Just now preachers all over the country (writfcs a, New York correspondent) are conducting a vigorous pulpit campaign against the "hipjess" fashions. Clergymen one and all have assumed that the "hipless" gown is a wicked Parisian invention, like the mushroom hat, which Americans are now manufacturing by the thousand.