BRIGHTNESS IN DRESS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 52, 29 August 1925, Page 16

BRIGHTNESS IN DRESS

MAN'S PRESENT STYLE THWART,

ING NATURE.

Dr. Thomas Darlington, former health commissioner of New York City, is heading a revolution m the direction of coloured clothes for men. "Man,"' he says, "is naturally a naked animal. His skin was made to function in direct contact with open air. If he- persists in wearing* ha nwny wrappings, as a mustard poultice he only succeeds in thwarting Nature and in reducing his own efficiency. Now look at women, for instanco. Tlioy began to have a rush of common-sense to the skull about twenty years ago. Within the memory of many a \iobbcd and shingled hend is the time when every lady wore a quilted petticoat as thick as a'small-sized comforter, a red flannel skirt under that, and (.hen some Canton flannel lingerie heavy enough to. be bought in the awning department. Qyer- all that was hojsted a boned and thrice-lined gown long enough to furnish inter-urban transportation facilities for any germs that happened to be tired of walking. Now women are sturdier and far less prono to neuritis and tuberculosis than they were even a generation ago. Every time they've dropped a petticoat they've added a year or more to their expectation of life. "But have the men made similar progress ? Lock at them and weep! Hot clothing means that blood needed" by the brain and by other vital organs is being drawn to the skin instead. It follows like fish after soup that the mind is reduced in efficiency, and that the liver does its work on a languid two cylinder?. One wouldn't regret it so much if their sufferings placed them among the martyrs to beauty and art. But they don't. They endure discomforts of jungle explovers for the sake of their clothes, and look all the while like something the cat might have dragged in but was ashamed to."

The remedy, according to Dr. Darlington, is the creation of sensible, aesthetic garments to take the place of the overrated cocoons in voguo at the present lime. In order to put his revolution on ,1 practical basis, tlio former health commissioner has (says the New York "World Magazine") designed a number of styles. "What do you think of this?" inquired the doctor, producing a velvet jacket the colour of a raspberry sherbot. "It's one of several I designed for wear at the opera. You may think me inconsistent from, the fact that, it has a collar.- But I believe that man ought to wear collars, opposed as I am to stiff or uncomfortable ones. The t^qth of the maftcr is that men's necks are not beautiful. They're either as stringy as a dish of succotash, or.else they have an .Adam's apple that rides up and down on their conversation like a restless walnut in the oesophagus of an""ostrich. You will note tha.t' this jacket has frogs instead of buttons. That's one important flower of China's fifty centuries of civilisation, and perhaps the real reason why Oriental laundries have never learned to treat buttons kindly. ■' With the, air of a.nian taking reluctant rabbits out of a silk hat, Dr. Darlington produced in rapid succession a long smock, a white satin jacket with black'pateh pockets intended for evening wear, and .1 Icose, lavender blouse that seemed to curry April winds in. its silky folds. "The great advantage of these is thn.t except in unusually cold weather one, would wear nothing underneath, but a littlit. union suit. Thcre'd bo no vest to a«t ns a volunteer ash tray; no collar but)ons to make frescoes on one's neck, rui'l no heavy woollen coat flint, carries a. small edition of the torrid zone in its fibres."