SWEEPING BACK

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 108, 9 May 1930, Page 10

SWEEPING BACK

LONG SKIRTS RETURN

INVASION OF LONDON

FEAR OF WORSE FATE

United Press Association—By Electric T«lr

crapb—Copjrlglit (Received 9th May, 1.30 p.m.)

LONDON,-Bth May.

Almost before London has realised it, long swooping skirts have returned. Each day and night sees thousands more victims of fashion. So seriously has the invasion, which was regarded as almost impossible,, been taken that it was the subject, of a debate of the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries to-night. Miss Ellen Wilkinson advocated skirts three inches below the knee, and Lady Duff-Gordon six inches The art critic, G.. S. .Sandila'nds, declared unequivocally for long skirts day and night, but met with small support. Miss Wilkinson declared that the short skirt largely obliterated class differences. Sho appealed to the power of fashion dictators. The crinoline was just beyond the long skirts. "If Ilifv ge£ us into long skirts," sbo said, "they'll get us into corsets." Miss "Wilkinson fervently appealed to business girls rigidly to resist. s Lady Duff-Gordon declared with emphasis and great applause: ".The long skirt will never return. Men will stop it. The girl who wears it is a fool."

Thus saying, she stood upon the table to exhibit her own short skirt.

Mr. Sandilands urged that throughout the whole experience of art, the long skirt had triumphed. "I do not advocate short skirts," he said, "but trousers." He was howled down. The audience unanimously declared that it would not wear them. .

Meanwhile, the Men's Dress Eeform League, in which Dean Inge is prominent, declare that women bad let them down. "Last year," they said, "we were upholding her as a model of good sense to misguided men. They are now behaving like poor fool man, and trail disgusting dresses at the floor. Then they will return to' the nursery and kiss children, carrying millions of disease germs."

Nevertheless, the dress reformers are getting ready for a summer campaign.