WOMEN'S DRESS SENSE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 35, 10 August 1933, Page 15

WOMEN'S DRESS SENSE

ENGLISH INFLUENCE

NEW BRITISH MATERIALS

(From "Tho Post's" Representative.) LONDON, July 7. During the course of one of his useful and interesting addresses, this time to the members of the Women's Luncheon Club at Leeds, Mr. E. H. Symonds (president of the British Fashions and. Fabrics Bureau) declared tho fashionpowe:- of British women to bo so great that they are making England the leading nation in ths world of fashion. Indeed, several Paris dressmakers of international, repute have, within recent times, approached him with the view to collaborating in London with the well-known business of which he is chairman and man'agiug director. This is regarded as a great compliment to the power,and importance that London in particular, and England in general, is attaining in the world of fashion, and it is all due to; tho remarkable and continuous growth ofc the dress sense of British women. Mr. Symonds mentioned that at a fashionable restaurant in London a spontaneous competition was recently -held, when, amid a brilliant gathering of beautiful international women, beautifully gowned, two' English girls were unanimously voted the best dressed, and they were cheered to tho echo. DESIGN AND COLOUR. "If we lead in fashion we can lead in fabrics," said Mr< Symon. "Very often the fabric inspires the fashion, and fashionable fabrics will, as I have so often tried to drill into our manufacturers, always have a ready sale all over the world—tariffs or no tariffs. It is very pleasing to see British manufacturers responding to the change that has taken place in tho buying of dress goods. They now realise that the women of today want beauty of design and beauty of colour, beforo durability. '' The great cry of the present generation is—give us something new,_ something original. Originality in fashion is very difficult to find. Almost every new creation is a modernised version of a fashion, or a particular feature of a fashion that has gone before. Fashions are always created to suit changing times, changing customs, and new. materials. '■ ; "Young women, who have often laughed at the family portrait album, are already beginning to wear modernised versions of old^tirne styles—dresses with flounces, frills, puff sleeves, moulded bodices, and high waists, also. Dolly Varden, pork-pie, and numerous types of modernised Victorian and Edwardian head-gear. • "Before this year expires," said Mr. Symonds, "I venture to predict they will be wearing longer skirts with their morning and afternoon dresses and tailor-made costumes, >and will have adopted leg o' mutton sleeves and coats with square padded shoulders. "lv fact, the upper half of tho female body will once again resemble a human triangle with a knob on the top and supported by a pair of Indian clubs. This intriguing last century style modernised by the fashion creators of today and made attractive and eye-appealing, will be made by ] women, just as the long skirt fashion j was made by women." SUGGESTED NEW OFFICE. Mr. Symonds ventured the suggestion that-a chancellor of fashion. would be more useful and helpful to British trade and industry and to tho nation at large than the Chancellor of tho Exchequer. The head of a Government Department of Fashion could bring prosperity back to textiles—the third largest industry of Great Britain—by making pride in English fashions a nation-wide fashion;' he conld make cooperation between art and industry a very profitable fashion; and he could make wise spending a national fashion.