THE RUSH FOR TROUSERS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 103, 1 May 1926, Page 20

THE RUSH FOR TROUSERS

■frNSOBM OF THE WEST IN THE EAST.

The divinity, students of Cairo have provoked the ■ ire of the Minister of Education by forsaking their flowing robes for trousers (says the "Manchesjtor Guardian")- Defying all disciplinary measures they persist in wearing ,the uniform of the "West. A little more of this, and, in response to the fashion dictated, with severe penalties for non-obsrvance, by Kemal Pasha from Angora, the immemorial East will present as commonplace a vista pf bowler-headed, tweed-suited folk as does Market street, Manchester. It is, by all the canons of romance and aesthetic, a most deplorable sort of internationalism. The philosopher who fifty years ago reminded us that all men are but bifurcated radishes at least launched his depressing axiom in an age .when a large part of the race did its best'to disguise the fact. But now it ; Beems that bifurcation is to unite mankind, and —if the latest Western fashions be followed- —possibly women-kind, $oa, the world ove~. It is a melancholy that if this sudden craze of ithe Near East to imitate the garb of were likely to be more than .temporary, we might well despair of a '►yorld from whose people variety is ftoon to be rapt. But fashion, crazy '{though its fluctuations seem, has its IJurable roots in climatic and industrial .conditions. In an England as leisur;ed and as suitless as that before the ;%ddnstrial revolution a man might adjust his lace ruffles nattily and be 'ferae they would keep clean for a reakjnable spell. The drab cylinders in jwi.icl. he now encases his arms and legs 'were forced on him, not by aesthetic nor even by desire for jnore comfort. They appealed because ithey were finable, mass-produced, and 'easy 4o pv ' i in an age that had no •time to spare for frills or colours. The ."JTurk and the Arab and the Eyptian ;-have no such urge to abandon the cos,that centuries of experience haye 1 '^prescribed as most suited to their needs. Moreover, while they tend to enslave themselves needlessly to Western fashon in its ugliest and least imaginative iphase, the tide in. the West flows all itowards variety. As yet it may have (brought no more than Fair Isle jumpjers and fancy socks. But if the East (persist in a senseless copying of our {worst limitations we may well be 'driven to a pleasant excess. It will be ■«. just judgment on Kemal for his dress ;'decrees if he realises some day that jwhile sheikhs strut in trousers and Ijemirs in tweed caps Europe has reverted to the doublet and hose, the kilt, jj&r any one of the pleasanter fashions jjo£ a past that took some thought for ,jthe design of its dress. "Back to the .■|fcoga," for instance, would bo a conclusive and highly satisfactory Western ; jojoswer to the Eastern slogan of -'On