OXFORD "BAGS"

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 50, 27 August 1925, Page 9

OXFORD "BAGS"

Wise old Bacon's conception of the man or the youth who travelled abroad, was that when ho returneth_ home his travel should appear rather in his discourse, with profit to himself and t6 others, than in his apparel. But the fact that not a few of the Young Australian League boys, in their long travel abroad, appeared to have been mainly impressed by the Oxford "bags"— *thp monstrous, tunnel-like trousers which have been affected by the young 'Varsity blooda in England—suggests that Bacon's essays must have been'a closed book to many of them. For their travel appeared in their apparel—in short, in the terrible-looking trousers which they wore, the Oxford "bags" which flap round, the legs like bell-bottoms, and are a sartorial offence. The trouble is that, like the measles, the fashion has spread; it has found its way into ono of the Great public schools in Sydney, but the attitude toward* the 25 or 30 boys of the school who have braved the publics gaze in the hideous trousers shows clearly that the Oxford "bags" will not be countenanced by the authorities. The comparatively few young "bloods" who are to be seen in Sydney in these extraordinarily expansive trousers, are gazed at with open-eyed wonder, and are admired for their daring. Sydney is opposed to these sartorial eccentricities, even if they have impressed not a few of the Young Australia League boys.