SAMENESS OR VARIETY ?

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 124, 21 November 1929, Page 13

SAMENESS OR VARIETY ?

A WOMAN'S QUESTION

A member of the new British Colour Council has just made a very interesting statement, writes Helen Bryant in the London "Daily Telegraph." The newspapers report Mr. Symouds as saying that "every woman has a horror of looking like another woman." This is a nice, definite, but surely somewhat hasty generalisation. If it had a solid basis in fact, would not there •be some extraordinarily interesting but perhaps slightly bizarre interpretations of apparel to be seen in our otherwise not inordinately ' exciting streets? .

If every woman has a "horror" of looking like every other woman, why does she subscribe (as practically every woman does) to fashion, which iv the last analysis is nothing more nor less than a uniform, dictated —as all uniforms are—by the few, and worn by the many? Far from having a horror of appearing like other women, most of us ask nothing better. For in sameness lies safety—and it has even been said that the life of a woman is one long playing for safety. Perhaps it was a belief in this reading of feminine psychology ■which caused a big American store to advertise a certain Paris model dress as the one "worn by seventeen smart women-on the same evening in the casino at Vichy." One may argue that possibly each of the seventeen women was not exactly pleased to encounter her sixteen sisters-in-taste—but the fact remains that this was looked upon, by those supposed to know, as a selline point! . . B

Not only does conformity with a set rule mean safety, but something faxmore valuable—economy of effort. It is much easier and quicker to do what one is told than- to .originate for oneself. What made a wave of shingling sweep over the world, and a wave of short skirts, and : now a wave of long ones 1 It can - hardly be" a. horror of looking Hko one's next-door neighbour.

"MY DEAR!. HOW ORIGINAL!"

And when, occasionally, one does make a plunge and proeuro something truly uovel (which is still fairly sure to bo within certain definite limits set by "chic") is not one almost sure to be approached by friends who remark: "My dear! How original! Where did you get that? I must have one like it!"

Nor does one find this entirely displeasing; indeed, the question may have been hoped for rather than otherwise. And this, not for mere greed of flattery,_ but for a far sounder reason— the desire to be confirmed in one's choice. It is just a little trying to wear something which no one else is wearing, however "original" one may long to be, for, though one start off never so confidently, one is apt to get a nasty little chilly feeling if nobody thinks well enough of the innovation to follow one's lead. Whereas if one's friends blossom forth in replicas, how warm and pleasant is the feeling which results in the originator's breast! For her belief in her own taste is thus consolidated—and nothing is nicer than to have the world at large confirm one's good taste.

If woman's horror was that of looking like other women, might she not turn up at dances in a bathing dress, at races in a toga,, and do her shopping in pyjamas? It is this horror, declares our friend on the British Colour Council, which is causing tho pendulum of fashion to swing away from short skirts and close-cropped heads. Is that so.! Or do I disclose myself as being merely femininely illogical when I wonder whether, should this particular horror really exist, therb would be any "pendulum of fashion" causing us (iv ,a body) to swing from one extrcmo to another, at all?